Ah, the business card. Still a valuable business tool after all these years. If you’re a full-service shop, you’re likely printing business cards for clients that use your other services. If you’re not, you may be missing out. It’s a nice little revenue stream that requires very little work, and even less up-front investment. That is… if you’ve chosen the right business card slitter.

But how do you do that?

When it comes to business cards, you must consider volume and automation. The more volume you expect, the more automated you probably want to be. Automated business card slitters like the HS-3000 will cut and stack 1,000 cards in five minutes ready to box and deliver. When you’re doing cards for an entire company that’s just gotten a new logo or street address, the speed and accuracy of a machine like this comes in handy.

Manual models are still efficient and are certainly not slow, and they have the advantage of being extremely economical. Lloyd’s has a great selection of both manual and automatic card slitters.

The thing to consider when buying either model is the format in which you’ll print the cards in the first place. 8-up, 10-up, 12-up, gutter, or no gutter are all options. Just remember, the flexibility and speed your print shop has in cutting business cards may just keep your customers from exploring purchasing one of these machines on their own. These machines are so easy to operate, they’re also sold as “ideal for the office.”

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In this series of posts, “How do I choose?”, we will help you take a little of the guesswork out of selecting the best print finish product for your shop or office. It’s sometimes difficult to find the right machine to fit your needs when there are so many models.

An industrial grade form burster is essential to print shops who specialize in mailing or mail houses that have added digital printing to the mix. The ability to take on accounts with customers who do high-volume invoicing, grade reporting, or other applications where multiple forms are printed on one page.

First, know what your forms are printed on – cut sheet or tractor-feed paper? This is obvious, but knowing your limitations with the type of sheet you print on, could prompt you to make some other changes. Cut sheet forms have some flexibility in what type of machine they’re printed on in the first place, but you’ll find fewer errors in pagination and more options in burster machines for tractor-feed forms. For example, Lloyd’s has two table-top, and one high-volume cut sheet burster, but ten varieties of tractor-feed models.

The next crucial step in your comparison would be the speed at which your burster will operate. In the tractor feed category, the Low-Volume Series of Formax Bursters processes at speeds of 0 to 200 feet per minute. The Medium-Volume Series processes at speeds of 15 to 350 feet per minute and is capable of handling forms up to 17” long. The High-Volume Series operates at speeds up to 500 feet per minute. Your shops capacity for big jobs and happy customers is only limited by how much you can run efficiently in a day.

Also, consider the flexibility of you need in a machine. Do you need the ability to accommodate a longer form length? Do you need an imprinter add-on? A counter for audit purposes? Don’t just think about the here and now. Your business is growing. Giving your sales reps the more options to sell in the market place will keep your machines running more often and the profits will be … bursting your expectations.

If you have questions about the capability of any of Lloyd’s bursting machine models, feel free to contact us.

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It all has to come together sometime. All those pages in the presentation, the employee manual, the book, the instructional guide, the schematics… They’ve all got to have some sort of binding to meet the customers budget, the readers needs and a style that looks good. But, what kind of binding machine do you need?

Well, the answer to this one is a little trickier. You may even want more than one machine. First you need to determine the type of binding that you think you’ll use most often.

• Comb binders – cheap, effective. Plus, combs can be opened to add/subtract sheets.
• Coil/Wire binders – Comes in a variety of colors and materials. Allows the reader to lay the book open flat and turn pages a full 360-degrees.
• Unibind binding machine – Quick, slick and permanent. A steel spine at the back of the cover allows the paper edges to sink into a heated resin.
• Perfect bound machines – Most paperback books at your local retailer are bound with this method. It’s glue-based and leaves a nice sturdy spine.

Once you’ve chosen a couple binding methods that you’d like to offer at your shop, consider flexibility, speed and cost.

You’ll certainly find flexibility with a combo system. A single purchase will allow you to do both comb, wire or coil (depending on the machine). However, keep size in mind. With comb or coil systems, you may not want to limit yourself to standard 8 1/2″ x 11″, so investigate the machines that can accommodate 14″ or 17″ sheets. Speed is affected by manual or automatic operation and the number of sheets that can be punched at one time.

The most crucial consideration however, is the question of cost. What you can sell and what your customers are willing to pay for may limit your choices. A perfect binding system is expensive initially, but costs little in upkeep. The Unibind thermal system itself is inexpensive considering the nice end product, but supplies are comparitatvily high, per piece. So, remember not to merely look at the machinery that makes the binding happen. Look at the plastics and metals that make up the binding.

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It’s one thing to upgrade the speed and efficiency of your office by choosing the right folding machine, but you can take invoices and other direct mail to a new level of automation with a document inserter. Because you’ll be investing significantly more on an inserter than you would a simple folding machine, it’s important that you weigh the benefits of each tier of functionality.

More than speed, which varies slightly between models, document inserters are primarily distinguished by the number of items that may be inserted into mailing envelopes. When shopping, you may consider that at this time you only ever insert an invoice, a form letter and a return envelope into 90% of your mailings. In that case, the Formax 6202 is a perfect machine for your operation.

However, you must consider growth in your business, change in operating procedures, and things as simple as the two-page invoices that make up only 10% of your mailings take all afternoon for two staff members. What is the opportunity cost there? What’s the phrase about being as strong as your weakest link? Don’t let a little bit of underused functionality get in the way of what could be a fully automated process.

Then, consider what your office could do with an even more advanced inserter. A new strategy with direct mail may add a significant line of revenue to your budget. What value could you add to your customers? To your employees?

Answer these questions and shop Lloyd’s for the best deal on document inserters. The models we carry all have warranties and are virtually maintenance free.

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Lloyd’s has 15 paper folding machines to choose from, but which one is right for your office? This is an investment, so there are several things to consider.

A folding machine in your corporate office will save time and money by automating the folding of your invoices, letters and other documents. Tabletop paper folding machines fly through thousands of sheets per hour and quickly become an incredible asset to productivity.

The first question to ask yourself is what are you folding now and what might you be folding in five years? Sort of a silly question I know, but it may be that invoices and contracts are the only thing you’re putting in the mail right now and they only require a typical “z” type fold. But, perhaps next year the company brochure will change and you’ll handle it’s printing in-house. It would be a shame to find out then that your folding machine can’t handle the custom fold required and you have to pay to have it done elsewhere. In this case, application and flexibility are key.

Speed is always an issue as well. The speed in which your machine is cranking out a folded finished product can vary significantly. An economical choice may fold 7,200/hour, but you can more than double that in other models. And you must also consider set-up time. A are easy to set-up, but simply take more time than an automatic programmable tabletop folder like the next level up.

Remember, the idea behind the paper folder is to save staff time (and boredom) in manually folding documents for daily mail, newsletters, and brochures. Find the right folder at Lloyd’s by asking yourself the right questions about its potential application in your office today and in the future.

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What are you cutting at the office? Yes, I know someone has to cut the cake for the secretary’s birthday, but that’s not what I mean. It seems we all end up doing some sort of paper crafts once and a while. Trimming down those photos for the traveling exhibit, cutting out stacks of pamphlets to fill the marketing rack in the reception area, slicing up that spreadsheet that mistakenly printed on the ginormous paper in the bottom drawer.

Every office needs a paper cutter, the only question is, which one?

Paper cutters basically come in two flavors these days – Guillotine and Rotary. Like many other items in this series of posts, you need to consider volume and speed. But, you also need to take into consideration the safety of your staff and how accurate cuts need to be.

Guillotine paper cutters are commonly found in offices. They’re sharp, can cut through multiple sheets with ease, and there are some great measurement guides on the working surface. Multiple sheets at a time speaks to the volume necessity, but often works against accuracy. The clamps and lockable gauges of the Kutrimmer tabletop trimmer assist with accuracy, but its most impressive additions are safety features. Different models of guillotine cutters basically allow for larger sheets and more working space.

The most accurate cuts will always be made with Rotary cutters. My personal fav is sold at Lloyd’s. The Roll-Blade rotary trimmer not only has great measurement guides and a self-sharpening tungsten blade, but it also cuts through cardboard and some plastic with just as much accuracy a it does with paper. And, unless you’re really trying, it’s virtually impossible to cut yourself with this rotary.

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“We live in the digital age. The paperless corporation is upon us…” Yeah, I’ve heard that for a few years. There are still stacks of invoices, printed emails, memos, notifications from human resources, and project files ALL over my office. We live in the digital age, that’s true, but we also live in the age of HIPPA regulations, corporate espionage, invasive audits, and big brother. There’s simply a lot on paper that needs to be destroyed before the wrong person sees it.

But, which paper shredder should I get for the office? Does it matter that there are 50 employees on this floor? Or that bank account numbers are often on the forms that I shred? What about those boxes of old accounting files in the basement we plan on having the intern take care of?

Choosing a shredder is all about quantity and level of security. A strip-cut shredder like the Formax FD8600 will accept your feed quickly, but it won’t be as secure and the container will fill up quickly. Cross-cut models like the Formax FD8500 will chop up your documents into a fine dust, but they simply take longer because they’re working harder. Consider that feed speed. When there’s a lot of archives to shred, you don’t want to feed your machine ten sheets at a time. You don’t want your employees spending all day away from their desk.

Then look at the extras. These days we don’t just need to destroy paper. Consider a shredder with the ability to shred compact discs, credit cards and the occasional file that still has a paper clip attached. You want a shredder with the ability to do that without damaging the blades, auto cleaning and reverse functions are important features to include.

Lloyd’s carries a line of Formax Office Shredders that each have great features and come in both strip-cut and cross-cut models. They all have a warranty on the cutting blades and can accept a varying number of pages. Use the compare feature in the list view to find the shredder for your office. The garbage disposal in the break room is just not going to work anymore.

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For example, Lloyd’s has nine different round corner machines. There are options and add-ons for some, and others are simply manual. In each purchase you make, you should consider the following as it relates to your business’s operation.
Corner rounders are pretty simple machines. They basically make measured cuts on the corner of your printed sheets. This finishing method has always been popular, but more-so in recent years as print products mimic the style of online communications. It’s not often that you see an icon or a photo online with squared-off corners.

So, let’s look at application first. Are you printing posters or business cards? Are you printing on heavy or standard stock? The size alone may rule out a manual table-top rounder, so be sure to look at the table dimensions. And, heavy stock may require the power an automatic can provide – which also puts you over $1,000. If you’d like the option to cut through metal for signage production, you’ll need a specific machine.

For rounders I think quantity and speed necessary can be measured by the capacity of sheets you can feed the machine at one time (in inches). A rounder in the hobby category may only accept a few sheets at a time with a .04″ clearance, but commercial medium and heavy-duty rounders will allow an inch or more to be cut. Thicker cut, means you’ll be moving through projects faster. Do you think your capacity will grow or remain the same? Choose a model for 2 years down the road, rather than one you need today, because your needs will hopefully grow once you add this machine.

The frequency of your use will require replacement cutting dies, so the availability and cost of these parts should also be a consideration. You’ll also want to investigate the variety of blade sizes and designs available for a particular model as well. A wide variety of cutting options will also add to your flexibility and options for the customer.

Finally, consider maintenance. All Lloyd’s corner rounders come with a year warranty, but looking beyond this time frame consider your potential frequency of use and the availability of replacement parts.

To check out Lloyd’s selection of corner rounders and compare models, visit our website.

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How is it Used?

The Bookletmaker Jr. Semi-Automatic Bookletmaker is an entry-level machine with space saving, compact design. The automatic paper centering, dual staple heads and fold rollers add to the speed of use, helping you crank out up to 250 sets an hour. It takes standard sizes (8 1/2″ x 11″ to 11″ x 17″) and you don’t have to go to the shooting range to practice.?

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And How Much Does it Cost

The MBM Bookletmaker Jr. Semi-Automatic Bookletmaker is $809 at Lloyd’s. We’ll throw in free shipping and a gift with your purchase.

For more information on the MBM Bookletmaker Jr. Semi-Automatic Bookletmaker or to place an order, please visit the Lloyd’s website.

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How is it Used?

The Binderymate 2 is operated by a foot pedal and will mount easily to most work tables. You’ll be able to stitch 60 pages at a time (depending on the stock you’re using), and the transparent guard will keep you safe without getting in your way. I like that its also flexible enough to accommodate sizes as small as 2″ x 2″ to 11″ x 17″. If you’re looking for a dual head stitcher, this Binderymate Wire Stitcher can be easily converted to connect a twin machine.

And How Much Does it Cost

The MBM Binderymate 2 Wire Sticher is $2,195 at Lloyd’s. We’ll throw in free shipping and a gift with your purchase.

For more information on the MBM Binderymate 2 Wire Stitcher or to place an order, please visit the Lloyd’s website.

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