What Is A Perfect Bound Book?
If you’re in search of a book that offers guaranteed quality and durability, perfect bound is the perfect choice. A perfect bound book is one of the most cost-effective binding types we offer but you can be confident that we don’t compromise cost for quality. Our expert team of skilled printers and bookmakers have years of industry knowledge and know-how. Their commitment to bookmaking guarantees that our perfect bound books are crafted to stand the test of time, combining precision and longevity.
Perfect binding offers complete versatility for your next project, it’s suitable for a range of applications such as children's books, portfolios, and magazines. Its strength and durability are further underscored by the use of strong adhesive to bond the pages, ensuring a prolonged shelf life.
With hard and soft cover perfect bound books available, there’s no limit to what you can create. Whether you’re looking for flexibility and endurance or a more luxurious protective finish, there’s something to suit your next project.
Our perfect bound books come with two cover options;
Soft cover:
Our soft cover perfect bound books combine the best of both worlds, flexibility and durability. A soft cover is the perfect choice for more projects where costs need to be kept low without compromising on quality.
Hard cover (self ended):
Taking your print to the next level, a hard cover is ideal for more high-end print jobs where luxury and strength is a must. Mounted on 2500mic board hardback complete with a 150gsm matt lamination cover, hard cover is the perfect choice if you’re out to impress. Our hard cover books are self ended - the final pages of the book are glued to the hard cover rather than adding separate end papers like other book binding methods.
How Are Perfect Bound Books Printed?
Utilising the strong nature of our adhesives and our team’s wealth of binding experience, you can be sure that your next book job will stand the test of time. Explore how your perfect bound book is created as it passes through our factory, the hands of our skilled team and top-quality machines.
The Printing Process
Our perfect bound book jobs are printed on our state-of-the-art nanographic printers where the pre-collated book block will then be sent to our binders. We invest in only the best cutting-edge equipment for our factory to ensure that your next perfect bound book order meets your standards.
Step 1: Pre-Press
At instantprint, we understand that books are complex, requiring true attention to detail. Before sending to print, our skilled studio team will get to know your artwork, checking the specifications in detail and preparing your file for print using our rigorous and free 10 point artwork check.
Step 2: Printing
Machines: Nanographic - Landa
Your design will be sent down to our factory where our skilled operators will begin printing your design onto your chosen paper stock. Here, your inner pages will be printed as well as your cover.
In our factory, you’ll find the best of the best when it comes to our equipment. Printed on our state-of-the-art Landa using naographic technology, your book’s artwork is brought to life.
Step 3: Embellishment and Lamination
Machine: MGI JETvarnish / Autobond Laminators
At this stage, if you have opted for any embellishment or lamination on your book’s cover, this will also be added.
Utilising our MGI JETvarnish, this machine can add spot UV or foil to your book’s cover. If you need premium-looking print, this is the machine to thank. You can read more about spot UV and foil in our blog here.
For lamination, our Autobond Laminators are able to offer a range of solutions from matt to gloss. The heated chrome rollers of our Autobond Laminators help create a strong smooth seal to both sides of your print in one pass. Learn more about lamination and the different types in our blog here.
Step 4: Guillotining
Machine: Polar High Speed Cutters
After your book’s pages have been printed, they are taken to the guillotine. Your book’s pages are guillotined to ensure they’re trimmed to the correct size as specified when you placed your order e.g. A5. These single sheets ensure our perfect bound books have a neater and flatter spine.
Since your pages will already be in order after trimming the book block can be taken straight to the binder.
The Binding Process
Step 1: Gluing
Machine: Horizon BQ Perfect Binder
Once trimmed the book block is brought to our Horizon BQ Perfect Binding machines where the book block is fed into the machine and bound using hot glue.
Before the glue is added, the book’s spine will be cut and roughened, known as milling, preparing it for the adhesive and guaranteeing a flawless finish. Abrading the edges of the book block, the gathered signatures are slightly roughened and notched down the spine, exposing the paper fibres so that the glue will adhere better. The fragments of paper are brushed off the book block before the glue is applied allowing it to bond properly.
For our perfect bound books, we use a hotmelt glue called Planamelt. This glue is used for our perfect bound jobs as the glue has a faster curing time compared to PUR adhesives, which means we can move our perfect bound orders through our factory quicker.
Planamelt is also better for the environment. As part of our sustainability strategy, we ensure that the products we use in our production process sit in line with our goal of creating world-class print in a way that preserves the planet. Planamelt has no isocyanates in processing making it eco-friendly and easily recyclable.
Step 2: Cover
Machine: Horizon BQ Perfect Binder
Soft Cover
For our soft cover perfect bound books, a wrap-around cover is added to the outside of the book block using wet glue to create the finished product. As your book block is glued, your soft cover will be fed into the same machine from the other end where glue is applied to the spine, the block is then left to cure and dry before being trimmed.
Hard Cover
For our hard cover perfect bound books, a few more steps are involved. If you’ve opted for a hard- cover book, at this stage we will apply a false cover. Slightly thicker than your inner stock, the false cover is also fed into the same machine from the other end where glue is applied to the spine, the block is then left to cure and dry before being trimmed.
The false cover applied will act like endpapers to the book block and is what will help secure your block to the hard cover casing.
Step 3: Trimming
Machine: Horizon Variable Trimmer HT 1000V
Once the adhesive is dry, soft cover books complete with their cover and hard cover book inners with false cover attached, are then trimmed along three sides to ensure the final pages are neat and consistent. Our Horizon Variable Trimmer HT 1000V trims off any excess paper where necessary.
Step 4: Hard cover (Self Ended)
Machine: Kolbus Case Maker DA 260 and Kolbus BF513 Casing In Machine
For our hard cover perfect bound books, a few more steps are involved. If you opt for a hard cover, your book will be attached to a 2500-micron greyboard where we will cover your book's front and back pages as well as the spine. The false covers previously applied will act as endpapers to the book block.
- The greyboard, the material that makes the cover hard, is guillotined to size. The greyboard hard cover will be slightly larger than your specified inner size such as A4, usually 3mm to ensure the cover is attached correctly.
- The false cover and greyboard inners are then brought together using our Kolbus case maker.
- The finished case or ‘cover’ is then fed into our Kolbus casing in machine along with your existing book block where the hard cover is then attached to the book block using glue.
Step 5: Final Checks
Once complete, our expert team will take time to check over your finished product to make sure it meets our high standards. We’ll measure your book on every side to ensure accuracy after trimming as well as checking that all of the artwork is in order and all images and text are lined up.
Your booklets will then be sent to our dispatch team who will carefully package your print ready to be collected by our couriers and shipped to your business.
What Machines Are Perfect Bound Books Printed On?
Nanographic Printing - Landa S10P
When printing perfect bound books on our silk and uncoated stocks, it’s likely that we’ll use the Landa! We’re the proud owners of the UK’s first nanographic press – a new printing technology that is set to revolutionise our industry. The Landa helps us combine the methodology of lithographic offset printing with a digital operating system, which means your print gets the best of both worlds.
Horizon BQ Perfect Binders
The BQ has several automated features to help us keep efficiency high. These machines will adjust various features to ensure a strong bind is created – from the depth of glue penetration to how much glue is applied.
Horizon HT1000V Bound Trimmer
For our perfect binding department, it has to be a Horizon Variable Three-Knife Trimmer. Simply by scanning the barcode on a book’s cover, this trimmer can program itself to the required finished size, without the need for operator input.
In Conclusion
If you’re looking to level up your next book job, binding is the perfect solution. With durability and flexibility combined, you can easily create a book that sits in line with your budget but looks and feels luxurious.
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