Perhaps the most popular coil binding systemson the market, the Akiles CoilMac ECI is meant to provide a solutionfor businesses that aim to do a moderate amount of coil binding,probably for in-house documents and reports. Here is a brief overviewof this machine and some of its strengths and weaknesses as we seethem. Strengths: The punching capacity of theCoilMac ECI is stated at seventeen pages per lift, and we did find thatit was capable of reaching that number. We discovered however, that itwas much easier and more productive to keep the number to aroundfifteen sheets. That is still a pretty decent punching ALUZINC STEEL COIL capacity for amanual machine like this, and we also found that it punched two plasticcover sheets at one time without any problems.
The CoilMacECI has a coil inserter located at the front of the machine. Insertersmake the binding process a lot easier and we found that this one workedquite well. We really liked the foot pedal operation which allowed usto keep both hands on the book while the coil is being inserted. Forlarger sized books, you will still need to insert the coils by hand,but that is the case with any machine. One of the greatfeatures of the CoilMac ECI is that it has dies that are disengageable.What this means is that when you are doing your punching, you candisable some of the punching pins to accommodate different sizes ofdocuments. This will enable you to produce nice clean punches onletter, A4 and A5 sized documents. That is a lot of flexibility, andwill fill the needs of the vast majority of the documents that mostorganizations will be producing. However, even if you find the need topunch sheets that are longer than that, the CoilMac ECI features acontinuous punching guide that allows you to use a two punch process todo the job. The depth of punch margin control on theCoilMac ECI is also a nice touch. This is a feature that makes it mucheasier to gauge how far from the sheets’ edge you are punching yourholes. For larger sized books, you will want to punch the holes furtherfrom the edge in to ensure usability and durability.
TheCoilMac ECI is a nice machine with some great capabilities, but it isstill a manual machine when all is said and done. All that means isthat if you are a larger organization that will be doing a fair amountof binding, and/or binding larger books on a regular basis, you maywant to consider purchasing a machine with an electric punch. They areconsiderable more expensive, though, so you will have to weigh thepluses and minuses yourself. As stated above, the CoilMacECI’s coil inserter won’t work with most larger sized coils. This isnot uncommon for inserters that are attached to binding machines aspart of a system. You will have better luck with a standalone inserter,but even a standalone won’t do larger books all that well.
Tags: ALUZINC STEEL COIL
ZHEJIANG