How to bind A5 Booklets and A3 Documents for home and office

How to bind A5 Booklets and A3 Documents for home and office

Now you can learn how to bind A5 Booklets! Not all documents are A4 however with a little bit of extra effort documents of various sizes can be bound. You just need to make sure the materials are the right size and that your binding machine is up to the task. Please note the below methods are only for Plastic Comb binding and Metal Wire binding.

How to bind A5 Booklets smaller than A4

For documents smaller than A4 you will require a binding machine with deletable pins. This is a vital because if there are too many dies punching you can end up with half a hole on the edge of your paper.

The first step is to punch a scrap piece of paper cut to the size of the document you are binding. Once punched count the holes on the scrap paper as this will determine how many pins need to be pushed in. For example if you were comb binding and your scrap paper was A5 size and had 15 holes you would need to ensure that the first 15 pins from left to right were pushed in and the remaining pins were disengaged.

For a neat punch centre the holes using the margin adjust on the right hand side. If the outside holes are too close to the edges it might be a good idea to remove one more pin and then re-centre.

Once the holes are centred along your document it is time to cut down your plastic comb or metal wire so that the loops of the wire or comb match the number of holes on your document. Plastic combs can easily be cut using standard scissors and Metal Wires can be cut using a basic wire cutter found at any hardware store.

How to bind A3 Documents larger than A4

For documents larger than A4 binding can be a bit trickier but still easily done. All of our Plastic Comb and Metal Wire machines above entry level are capable of binding larger documents (except for our dual machines). If your machine can bind larger than A4 it will have a sprocket on the right hand side.

First ensure that all pins are pushed in and punch the document, please note there should be an overhang to the side of the machine. Once the first pass has been done flip document 180 degrees along the punched edge and line up corresponding hole with sprocket so that remaining holes can be punched. Pull out the pins where the holes have already been punched on the first pass to avoid double punching a hole.

Count the amount of holes punched and cut either the Plastic Comb or Metal Wire so that you have two equal lengths that fill all of the holes together. If this comes to an uneven number just have one comb or wire with an extra loop.

For further information or help with either process please contact us below.