The PC200 is positioned as a low-costspiral coil binding solution for low volume users. Here we take a lookat this machine and examine its strengths and weaknesses. Strengths: Thebiggest advantage the PC200 enjoys over almost all of its competitionis that this machine features 46 fully disengageable punching dies.There is no other machine on the market in this price range that offersthis kind of flexibility. We are also very impressed to finddisengageable dies at this price point. Disengageable dies allow theuser to stop any of the machine's pins from punching, thus allowingfully customizable punching patterns. The machine is designed to punchdocuments up to eleven inches, but larger documents are possible toousing a two step process. All in all, as we said, color steel sheet suppliers it is almost unheardof to find this kind of flexibility at this price. The makers of the PC200 have seen fit to include a pair of spiral coilcrimpers with the machine. This is a great idea, because there is nooverestimating how important crimpers are to the plastic coil bindingprocess. These are special pliers that are designed to cut off excesscoil and crimp the end so that the wire stays in the document where itbelongs, instead of winding its way out. While the pliers are onlyabout a thirty dollar value, the fact that you don't need to buy themseparately is definitely worth mentioning. Youmight expect a binding machine at this price point to be made ofplastic. We did too, but were pleasantly surprised to find that thePC200 is made of metal for the most part. It looks to us like a verydurable machine, and should last for ages if used in a small office orhome setting. The PC200 may not stand up to industrial use but it isn'tintended for that anyway. We also really like thePC200's adjustable punching-depth control, and the coil size selector.These are the kinds of things that make spiral coil binding just thatmuch easier. Weaknesses: For low volumeproduction, say a handful or so of documents per week, the PC200shines. However, you should be aware that the punching process used bythis machine is manual, and can get just a little tedious over thecourse of a bigger project. The punching capacity of 12 to 15 pages perlift isn't too bad, but again, for larger projects it will prove to bea lot more work than you intended. The inclusionof crimping pliers is a nice touch, but it makes us wonder why thereisn't a spiral coil inserter on the PC200 as well. This just means thatyou will be spinning the coil onto your document by hand. Again, notthat big of a deal for a handful of books, but the time it would taketo insert the coils on fifty to a hundred documents would besignificant. The process for binding documentslarger than eleven inches is a bit time consuming, and can take theinexperienced user some effort to learn to do correctly.
