‘Blinging up’ hard case books

Print Solutions

An Exeter based litho, digital and wide format printer and binder was looking to bring its hard case finishing in-house, to be more competitive and to meet the fast turnaround times for short runs. Ashley Printing Company prides itself on its comprehensive range of in-house finishing solutions, but outsourced its hard back books.

‘Over the last three to four years we were getting more and more requests from self publishers and for other applications like children’s books, photo books, travel books, recipe books and many others. The one thing that they all had in common was the requirement for a hard case and the short run length, anything from a single copy up to about 100 books,’ said Rob Otton, managing director.

‘We didn’t want to make a large investment in a casemaker which we were not going to use on a daily basis, which was why we were attracted by Ashgate’s Fastbind Casematic casemaker. We knew of Ashgate and a colleague, who had used one in another company, recommended it to us. It met all our requirements – a compact table top unit which is easy to operate, easy to store, affordable and produces high quality books.’

Ashley House purchased the Fastbind Casematic H46 Pro, which produces tailor made cases from CD size up to 1040 x 490 mm (when opened) in a matter of minutes. It can be used with printed or non printed covers. ‘We can select from a range of covers, some of which are printed on our HP Indigo. We can ‘bling them up’ using lamination, foiling or various printing techniques, such as white print. There are so many options depending upon the application. Together with our lay flat binding machine, which does edge to edge binding, we can embellish high end products inexpensively,’ said Rob.

The operation of the machine is simple. The covers are positioned on the Casematic’s illuminated suction table. Registration marks and a centre line ensure accurate placement. Once the boards are attached to the cover, the edges are easily folded using the integrated edge wrapper. The folding unit is adjustable for different thicknesses.

‘It is another added value binding solution that we can offer to our clients,’ Rob added. ‘Now we are looking at other applications such as hard cover ring binders.’