About a year ago, Staples initiated a new type of binding used in all their stores, and it has been popular ever since its initiation. Coverbind. Replacing the poor quality tape binding that was rarely used, coverbind has many pros and few cons about it’s usage and durability. Let’s look further to see what is good and bad about this binding type.
First off, the colors. Coverbind normally has a black or navy blue back cover, which is attached directly to the clear cover in the front. There is also a completely white version, but this for printing on the front cover (known as Print On Demand or POD), and a hardcover version that normal stores cannot use, but their HUB stations can (HUB is a larger Staples copy center, with more supplies and better machines. They work on extra large or special jobs. Your jobs are shipped there when needed and shipped back. While this creates a few extra days until you receive your order, their quality is usually great).
The process of binding is quicker than their other types of binding (spiral and comb), and sturdier as well. A strip of glue is implanted in the spine, and via a specific coverbinding machine, they heat up the glue enough to soften and grab onto the pages. After two minutes of cooling the booklet is ready for you to take. The entire process takes about four-five minutes, and they can do up to five booklets at once (depending on the size of your document).
As I said, it is the sturdiest binding they have, but there is one problem about it. Though both the spiral and comb bindings have a certain limit of pages per size of the binding, the associate can usually squeeze an extra few pages in to make the binding fit. Coverbind however has a very specific amount of pages that can fit into it. If the associate goes beyond that limit, than pages will not touch the glue when it is heating up and they will easily fall out. Given, fixing this is incredibly easy with coverbind, as they merely have to heat up the glue again and shuffle pages until they all fit, nonetheless you have to be very aware of the page limitation to ensure this does not occur.
Most coverbind jobs can be finished in the same day considering the rapid speed of the process, and if you have a document which exceeds the page limitation of a 1″ binding, they can send it out to the HUB center to bind it (HUB’s have up to 2″ bindings, which can fit nearly 400 sheets).
If you try out their coverbind, you will find it is incredibly sturdy, quick, and appealing to look at. My one problem about it, besides the limitation specifications, is that unlike spiral and comb where you can keep the book on one page just by folding it over, keeping one page open will be difficult. Since it is like a regular book binding, you will have to bend the spine for this, and that can make your pages come loose. Taking away that problem however, coverbind is the best binding Staples offers at a great price.
