2-Minute Tuesday Tip: Avoiding Confetti Chaos In Booklet Binding

I spent five years of my career working as the Procurement Manager for binding and finishing equipment at Kinko’s (now known as FedEx Office). It was my responsibility to recommend the best and most cost-effective products for our 1000+ locations across the United States. Part of that responsibility was identifying and resolving the biggest equipment-related problems in the field and this week’s 2-Minute Tuesday Tip was a common issue for us.

Since booklet binding (coil, comb, velo and wire) was one of our biggest sellers, it made sense to spend some time investigating this area of our business. It turns out that our number one service call on binding punch machines was caused by over-stuffed chip trays – a result of operators simply forgetting to empty the trays on a regular basis. This caused the paper waste chips to accumulate in the tray and ultimately jam the machine from the inside – resulting in costly service calls. Sadly, the manufacturers of binding equipment in that era (circa 1995) didn’t see this as an issue and made their chip trays way too small. Given the volume in our stores, we would’ve had to empty these things after every single job!

One of our suppliers, Performance Design Inc. (makers of the Rhin-O-Tuff heavy-duty punches) came up with a genius solution – they created an external chip tray (see the picture above) that would fill-up right in front of the operator’s face. When it was full, the chips would simply fall out onto the floor rather than jam-up into the machine. Not the cleanest solution, but a very effective one!

If you don’t have the volume to justify a heavy-duty PDI HD6500/7000 or HD7700 with an external chip tray, please remember to empty your chip tray after every job! This will extend the life of your machine substantially and will help to avoid costly service calls!

What are some tips you use to keep your finishing running smooth?