Jeff McRitchie

Six Things You Should Know Before You Buy a Proclick Binding Machine

GBC's new Proclick binding style is really cool. You can use a little tool to open and close the binding spines allowing you to add and remove pages from your document.However, if you are considering a Proclick binding system for your office, here are a few things that you should probably know before you rush out and buy one.

1. Proclick binding spines are only available in four colors: black, white, navy blue and frost. Provided that you can live with one of these four colors Proclick will work for you. However, if you have your heart set on a red, green or purple binding spine you will be out of luck with Proclick.
2. In addition to the limited color options available, there are also a very limited number of available spine sizes for Proclick binding. Currently there are only three binding sizes available: Small (5/16"), Medium (1/2") and Large (5/8"). These sizes are designed to fit the needs of most organizations. However, if you are going to need to bind larger documents and presentations you will probably need to find a different binding style.
3. Proclick binding spines are designed for use with standard letter size 11" x 8.5" documents bound on the 11" side. Currently Proclick spines are only available in 11" lengths. For half size documents it is possible to cut down Proclick spines using a sharp pair of scissors. However binding legal size or longer documents is not possible using a single Proclick spine.
4. Most of the Proclick binding systems available on the market are not designed to work with oversized documents or covers. If your company is used to using a slightly oversized document cover this can be important. The new Proclick pronto automated binding systems are not capable of punching or binding documents that are more than 11" in length. Likewise, the Proclick P50 is also not designed to punch documents that are shorter or longer than 11". If you do need to bind documents in other sizes you might want to consider a wire binding machine to do your punching. You could then close the Proclick spines manually.
5. Closing documents with the little zipper tool isn't as easy as it looks. In fact, if you don't crease the spine slightly and snap the first few loops shut by hand it will be almost impossible to close the spine. If you can't seem to get the hang of it don't worry about it. Sometimes it is just easier to snap the loops closed by hand. However, opening the spines with the zipper tool is very easy and it is also a lot easier to use the zipper tool to reclose the spines since they have already been creased.
6. The hole pattern used to bind Proclick can sometimes be a little bit confusing. The P50 and P200 punch an oversized round hole pattern, the Pronto punches an oversized Square hole pattern and traditional wire binding machines punch a smaller rectangular hole pattern. However, all of these hole patterns have 32 holes (3:1 pitch). You can mix and match pages that are punched with the different types of systems and they will work fine but they might look a little bit funny. If you plan on buying punched paper or binding covers to use with Proclick you definitely want to make sure that the hole patterns are the same so that everything looks good together.

All in all, Proclick binding is an excellent binding system and is ideal for most offices. However, before buying a Proclick binding machine or choosing Proclick for your office it is important to recognize its limitations. With the information from this article you should be able to make a more informed decision in choosing the right binding system to meet your needs.

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