How a Wire Bound Book Is Made

What Are Wire Bound Books?

Wire bound books employ a spiral wire coil that is passed through a series of perforated holes along the spine of the book. If you’re in search of a book that offers flexibility and durability, wire bound is the perfect choice. Incredibly hardwearing wire bound books are perfect for everyday use.

This binding technique is an ideal option for notebooks, calendars, manuals or any projects or campaigns you know are likely to be flipped through often. Offering a full 360-degree rotation with lay flat qualities, wire binding can help you create an accessible and user-friendly piece of print. An incredibly clever marketing solution, our wire bound books can be personalised to suit your brand and customers' needs. Choose from a range of sizes, stocks, lamination and pagination and build a wire book that you can be confident will stand the test of time.

How Are Wire Bound Books Printed?

Wire bound books require a level of true precision and attention to detail. Ensuring the perfect set-up for the book’s holes to be punched correctly and the careful winding of wire onto the book’s spine, our team of experts have all the know-how and skills to ensure your wire bound book oozes quality and is executed to the best standard.

The Printing Process

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: Landa S10P / HP Indigo
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 machines, your book’s artwork is brought to life.

If you’ve opted for a lined wire-bound book, these inners will already have been printed as we store these in our factory. Unlike our bespoke inners that are printed digitally, we’ll print our lined inners lithographically as we will usually print these in much larger quantities ready for use as orders come through our factory.

Step 3: Laminating

Machine: Autobond Laminators
At this stage, if you have opted for any lamination on your book’s cover, this will also be added. For lamination, the heated chrome rollers of our Autobond Laminators create a strong seal, combined with a rubber counter-pressure roller to smooth the laminate out. 

Step 4: Trimming

Once the pages have been printed they are guillotined to ensure they’re trimmed to the correct size as specified when you placed your order e.g. A5.

The Binding Process

Since the sheets will have been printed on our Landa or one of our HP Indigos, they will already be in order ready to be punched and bound. These single sheets allow for the pages to be turned fully along the wire when bound, they’re not fixed in one position like other book binding methods like perfect bound or stapled.

For bespoke wire bound books that have artwork on the inner pages, not plain or lined sheets, they will come tabbed in sections. This ensures that our wire binding team can easily pick out one of your book’s inners without having to count the sheets by hand, this creates a much more efficient process when individually punching and binding the books.

Step 1: Punching

Machines: Renz AP360 Punch Wiro
The pre-collated and trimmed pages and covers are loaded into our Renz AP360 Punch Wiro. The die (a template that shows us where holes need to be made) is adjusted to the correct size for the booklet and then pages are fed through the machine where holes are punched ready for the wire to be added.

Different book sizes may require a different amount of holes, for example, a portrait A4 wire bound book will need more holes punching than a portrait A5 book, however, a landscape A4 book will have the same number of holes punched along the spine as a portrait A5 book.

Step 2: Wire Binding

Machines: Renz ABL 500 Wiro Binder
Once your wire bound book has been punched, the pages and covers will then be taken to our Renz ABL 500 Wiro Binder.

Just like the number of holes needed is different for different size books, the same applies for the wire. Thicker pagination wire bound books will need a larger and wider wire compared to smaller books to ensure that the pages are able to open fully at 360 degrees. Our wires don’t come in a standard size, instead, a length of coiled wire is fed into our wire binder and each wire spine is cut to size for every single book order, depending on the number of pages, the thickness of the stock and book size. 

The machine is set to the right specifications for the order so it knows how much wire to cut and to what size. The wire loops remain open and one of our operators will hook your pages onto the open wire. The book will then pass through the machine where the wire loops are closed shut.

Step 2: 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 check to make sure that all of your pages are aligned when your book is shut as well as ensure that all pages are able to turn fully around the wire without getting caught.

Your books 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 Wire Bound Books Produced On?

Landa S10P/HP Indigo 100k

‍‍When printing wire bound books, we’ll use either the Landa or one of our three HP Indigo digital presses! 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. If you choose shorter runs the Indigo 100k will make light work of your print, achieving some of the best digital print possible.

Renz AP360 Punch Wiro

Pre-collated and trimmed pages for multiple jobs can be loaded into our Renz AP360 at once. The die (a template that shows us where holes need to be made) is adjusted to the correct size and then pages are fed through to be punched.

Renz ABL 500 Wiro Binder

Our Renz Wiro binder keeps our factory efficient and our printing process smooth. Our operators need only place the collated pages on the machine and it will automatically thread wire through the punched holes!

In Conclusion

Wire bound books are the perfect choice if you’re looking for complete flexibility and durability. Ideal for a range of projects and situations, wire bound books offer a full 360-degree rotation with lay flat qualities that are suitable for all kinds of marketing campaigns as well as everyday use cases.