Presented to the market as a wire binding
solution for small to medium offices, The GBC W400, formerly available
as the TL200, is a binding system that uses double o, twin loop, double
loop, and wire o binding spines. This review will delve into the
various features of the W400 and provide you with a listing of what we
believe the machine's strengths and weaknesses are, so you can make a
more informed purchase.
Presented to the market as a wire binding
solution for small to medium offices, The GBC W400, formerly available
as the TL200, is a binding system that uses double o, twin loop, double
loop, and wire o binding spines. In this review, we delve into the
various features of the W400 and provide you with a listing of what we
believe the machine's strengths and weaknesses are, so you can make a
more informed purchase.
Strengths:
At twenty sheets, the W400 has a pretty impressive
punching capacity for its size. We found that it met that capacity
pretty easily and believe that it would be a great choice for smaller
to medium type use, meaning short run publications. If you are going to
need a machine to produce huge numbers of documents, you will likely
want to look at something with an automatic punching mechanism.
We really liked the wire holder that is located on the back of the
W400. It is meant to hold the spine of the document in place while the
user hangs pages onto the document. We found that this design is much
easier to use than a lot of other machines on the market that utilize a
damp style holder for the wire.
Call us
shallow, but we also appreciate the aesthetics of the W400. It is a
sleek and stylish looking machine, built on the platform of some of the
older GBC / Ibico binding units. As always, they are designed for easy
use and to last a long time, and they will always look good in any
office.
Weaknesses:
The chief issue that we had with the W400 was with the
wire closing mechanism. It works great out of the box, but we found
that it might not stand up very well to heavy use. After a while we
discovered that either the drive chain or the plastic gear started
slipping, resulting in inaccurate or uneven closing, or in some cases
we can see how the wire closer could stop working altogether. It is
very possible that eventually you will need a standalone wire closer to
accompany this machine.
While the W400 is great
for punching letter size documents and covers that are oversized, the
lack of disengageable dies makes it impossible to cleanly punch sheets
that are half letter, A4, legal, or custom sized. Oddly enough, there
appears to be a small compartment that looks as if the user should be
able to disengage pins, but that feature appears to have been taken out
of the W400.
As with most to all of the 3:1
pitch binding systems out there, you will not be able to use the W400
to bind documents that exceed nine sixteenths of an inch, or roughly
one hundred twenty five pages. If you think that you will need the
capacity to bind larger or smaller books, there are machines on the
market that punch both two to one and three to one, such as the Akiles
WireMac Duo.
If you are interested in more information about
the GBC Wirebind W400 wire binding machine or are looking for a wire
binding system for your office, you should really check out MyBinding.com. They carry a huge selection of Wire Binding Machines
from manufacturers such as GBC, Akiles, Renz, Tamerica, DFG and
Rhin-O-Tuff. Plus, they have great prices on a great selection of Wire Binding Supplies. Check it out today!
