Jeff McRitchie

DFG Titan Coil Heavy Duty Manual Coil Binding Machine Review

The DFG TitanCoil is a heavy binding machine that is designed for medium sized companies that want to bind their own documents with spiral coil.The TitanCoil is a heavy duty, reliable, functional and user friendly binding machine. This makes it an excellent choice for POD applications, Quick-Printers, Copy Shops and professional organizations.

• The DFG TitanCoil is a heavy binding machine that is designed for medium sized companies that want to bind their own documents with spiral coil.
• Although this machine has a manual punch, it is built with high quality metal components for use in organizations that need to bind documents every day.
• The TitanCoil is a heavy duty, reliable, functional and user friendly binding machine. This makes it an excellent choice for POD applications, Quick-Printers, Copy Shops and professional organizations.
• It offers a heavy duty punching capacity, fully disengageable dies, and open punching throat and a built in spiral coil inserter.

Strengths / Features:

• The DFG Titan-Coil is one of the most durably constructed spiral coil binding machines available on the market. It is made almost entirely of metal components and is extremely durable. The housing, document table, handle and all the internal mechanisms are made from high quality steel. This durable construction allows the Titancoil to punch up to twenty five sheets at a time.
• One of the most impressive things about the TitanCoil binding machines is that it includes fully disengageable dies. For years, binding machine companies have said that it was impossible to include this feature on a coil binding machine since the punching pins were so close together. However, DFG has found a way to include this feature on their machines. This enables users to punch virtually any length of document. The throat on this machine is eleven inches long. This means that you can punch any document that is eleven inches or less in one punch. Any document that is longer than eleven inches can be punched using a two step punching process.
• The TitanCoil includes a special book measuring guide on the right hand side of the machine. You simply place your stack of pages under the measuring guide and press it down to determine the correct size of coil that you need for your book. This feature is extremely useful for organizations that bind reports and presentations that are different thicknesses. It take all the guesswork out of choosing the diameter of your coil binding supplies.
• On the left hand side of the machine behind the paper edge guide there is a depth of punch margin control. This control allows you to select how far in from the edge of the page the holes will be punched. The holes should be set closer to the edge of the page for small sized coils and further away for larger diameter books. If the holes are set too far away, the pages in your thin books may not turn freely. However, if the pages are set too close to the edge of the page, the sheets may tear out of your large diameter presentations.

Weaknesses / Limitations:

• The Titancoil includes an electric spiral coil inserter on the top of the machine. This is an extremely handy feature to have on a manual coil binding machine. It helps to spin the coils onto the edge of your documents. However, the design of the coil inserter on this machine has a few issues that make it less effective than other coil inserters on the market. The inserter on the Titan-Coil uses only one spinning rollers and is only six inches in length. Higher quality coil inserters utilize two rollers and longer lengths to make inserting go faster. The design of this inserter limits it to books that are less than 22mm in size. Larger coils will need to be inserted by hand.
• Although most of the components on this machine are made from high quality steel, there are a few pieces that are not nearly as durable. The spine measuring device, the edge guide and the depth of punch margin control adjustments are all made of plastic. The plastic depth of punch control or spine measurer shouldn't be a huge deal. However, the edge guide on a machine like this gets a lot of use. It would be a lot better if this edge guide was made of metal for durability and accuracy.
• The foot pedal used for the coil inserter on this machine is also not nearly as larger or durable as the foot pedals included on other similar pieces of binding equipment that are on the market. Depending on how much you use this machine and how hard you step on the foot pedal this is a component that may eventually need replacement.
• The final limitation that I noticed with the TItancoil is that the chip tray on this machine is fairly small. This isn't a huge deal. It just means that you need to remember to empty the chads from the tray more often in order to ensure that they don't back up inside the punching mechanism.

Recommendation:

• The overall construction and feature set of the DFG TitanCoil is actually quite excellent. Document Finishing Group has utilized a number of high quality metal components and included features on this machine that are simply not available on most other coil binding machines.
• However, there are a few limitations and concerns that I have with this machine. In my opinion, for most companies the Akiles CoilMac ECI is a slightly better choice than the DFG TitanCoil. The only exception is if your organization needs to bind custom sized documents. The TitanCoil is a better choice for that application.

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