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Three-ring binders remain a popular way to house a lot of information, making it easy to access documents and files subject to frequent updates. Binder inserts can take the form of single drilled sheets, drilled sleeves with pockets, drilled booklets, drilled formed media-holding pouches and more. A lot of drilling, right?
Advantages
Loop stitching is an ideal booklet binding style for bound material meant to be inserted and used in a ring binder for two primary reasons.
1) It lies flat. The "loops" are formed on the back of the saddle wire stitch. This offers one major advantage over drilling: It lies flat when opened, even if still in the rings! Outside a binder, saddle stitching will lie as flat as most binding styles. When a drilled booklet is bound inside a ring binder, however, functionality will be restricted by the rings. The bottom line is that loop stitched pages lie flat atop of the rings for very easy reading.
2) Copy Layout Flexibility. Drilled booklets need at least 3/4" gutter margin (more is even better) so copy can be seen when pages are partially opened while contained within the rings. Loop stitching avoids this planning issue because copy can be placed closer to the backbone.
Planning Considerations
1) Spoilage. When compared to regular saddle stitching, the loop stitching process will spoil more product during both makeready and production. Since the spacing between loops is critical, when a loop stitching head misfires the book becomes unrepairable, hence higher spoilage rates. How high? Spoilage can easily be double or triple what you'd expect of a comparable saddle stitched book. The best rule of thumb? Ask your bindery services professional for suggested spoilage allowances for each of your loop stitch bound projects.
2) Product width. Due to its positioning above the ring, the pages of a loop-stitched book will stick out farther on the face than drilled material of equal size. Consider making the backbone to face dimension smaller to ensure its contents remain flush or tucked inside the binder.
3) Loop size. If the binder rings are oversized in diameter, you'll probably need oversized loop stitches as well. Standard loop stitch heads create 6-mm loops. However, special heads can be used to create 8-mm loops.
4) Book thickness. Loop stitching isn't meant for very heavy books-we usually recommend 48 pages as a maximum page count for most projects.
The Rickard Advantage
At Rickard Bindery, we offer both a standard 6-mm diameter loop and an 8-mm diameter loop for binders with heavier rings. Discuss your project layout with our bindery experts to determine what options best fit your designs. Don't forget that Rickard Bindery has five saddle stitching production lines (up to 12 pockets) at your service. Ask us about Z folded stitching designs and our oversized and undersized binding capabilities.
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