Jeff McRitchie

DFG Wire 1000 Review

Aimed at small or home offices and organizations that are looking for a method of binding a few dozen or so booklets a week. The DFG Wire 1000 offers the user 3:1 pitch hole punching and three different binding styles at a reasonable price.

Strengths:

1. At a rate of twenty five sheets per lift, the Wire 1000 has a very good punching capacity, especially for a machine at this price point. We did find that the machine behaved a little better when we punched twenty or fewer pages at a time, though, as the handle was much more difficult to pull, and the quality of the punched holes suffered a bit when we tried to punch the full capacity.
2. You get a certain amount of flexibility with the Wire 1000, as it punches a three to one pitch hole pattern. This means that you will be able to bind documents using GBC Proclick spines, wire binding spines that are between three sixteenths and nine sixteenths of an inch, or with three to one pitch spiral coils. That is some pretty fair versatility.
3. One thing we really appreciated about the Wire 1000 is the fully disengageable punching pins. That allows you to work with just about any paper size. The punching throat is eleven inches, and it is also open which means that it works well with letter size sheets and smaller size documents as well. Using a two step punching process, you can handle longer sheets.
4. This machine appears to be of very solid, all metal construction, and we see no reason why it wouldn't stand up to years of use.
5. The Wire 1000 also includes a wire closer that is fully adjustable, and a wire hanger to, theoretically at least, make the binding process easier.

Weaknesses:

1. We found it a little strange that although the machine does in fact include a wire hanger as we stated above, it is located on the back of the machine, and it turns out that in order to use it you will have to move the machine to a sideways position on your workstation or desk. When it comes right down to it, this makes the wire hanger essentially useless.
2. The wire closing system on this machine is controlled by a small dial on the machine's side. We have found that this doesn't give us the kind of control over the process that a wheel or dual knobs do. The dial made it a little more difficult to fine tune the process. We didn't lose a lot of accuracy, but we can see how one might or how the closing mechanism may slip over time.
3. As this is a three to one pitch wire binding unit, you will easily be able to bind documents that are up to nine sixteenth of an inch thick (roughly one hundred twenty five sheets). With this machine you will have a difficult time binding documents that are any thicker than that. If you think your organization will need to bind thicker books on a regular basis, you should probably look at another machine. Possibly one with a 2:1 pitch wire binding punch

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