In the same building as the presses
Bindery and Finishing in Pittsburgh
Cutting, folding, stitching, die-cutting and hand work under the same roof as the printing - which is usually where a deadline is kept or lost.
Why it matters where it happens
A schedule is usually lost in the bindery, not on press
Printing a job is the predictable part. What tends to move a delivery date is everything after it — the trimming, the folding, the stitching — and in particular whether any of it has to be put in a van and sent across town.
Most of ours does not. The cutters, folders, stitchers and die-cutters are in the same building as the presses, which means a sheet can come off press in the morning and be folded and stitched the same day, and it means when something needs checking the person who printed it and the person binding it are twenty feet apart.
It also means a problem gets caught early. A fold that cracks or a cover that will not turn is discovered here, on our time, while the file and the people who printed it are still in the same room.
What happens here
The bindery floor
Not a list of things we can arrange. A list of machines in this building, with people who run them.
Cutting
Polar 115 and Polar 99 guillotines with pre-cutters, plus a Triumph 6660, so trimming is not queued behind one machine.
Folding
Four Stahl folders, from a 28″ down to a 19″ mini, so short folded work runs while a long job holds the big machine.
Saddle stitching
A Muller Martini saddle stitcher and a Horizon StitchLiner Mark IV, covering everything from a short newsletter to a long magazine run.
Die-cutting
A Bobst 102-E autoplaten and an Original Heidelberg cylinder - a letterpress that die-cuts as readily as it prints - for shaped pieces, pocket folders and anything a guillotine cannot make.
On-demand finishing
Two Duplo slitter/cutter/creasers, a 646 and a 616, for short-run work that needs trimming, slitting and creasing in one pass rather than three.
Scoring and creasing
A Morgana creaser for heavy cover stock, so a fold turns cleanly instead of cracking through the printed side.
Coil and Wire-O
Punching and binding both done here, for manuals, directories and anything that has to lie flat when it is open.
Pocket folder gluing
A Moll gluer, so a die-cut pocket folder is formed and glued here rather than shipped out flat to somebody who will.
Hand bindery
Collating, inserting, hand folding, hand stitching, taping, banding and chipboard packing. The work that no machine wants, done by people who have done it before.
Drilling, padding and packing
Drilling, padding, a shrink wrapper and packing out, so what arrives is ready to use rather than ready to sort.
Bound work
One of each, as it actually ran
Specifications taken from the job, not from a brochure.
Saddle stitched
PetConnections
Quarterly magazine
32pp self cover, 8.375″ × 10.75″, 60lb gloss text
Perfect boundfinished with a partner
Forms + Surfaces
Outdoor product catalog
200pp plus a 4pp cover, hinge scored, 120lb Endurance Silk cover
Case boundfinished with a partner
Ron Donoughe
Ways of Pittsburgh
84pp hard cover, 10″ × 10″, 100lb silk text
Die cut
Pittsburgh Penguins Foundation
Dog bone calendar
28pp, two-piece cover, cut to the shape of a dog bone
Foil and die cut
Saint Francis University
Admitted student folder
9″ × 12″, 100lb Neenah Classic Linen, foil stamped silver and white
Specialist finishing
Managed by us, done by specialists
Perfect binding, case binding, foil stamping, embossing and UV coating are done by partners who do that work every day. That is the point of them: a shop that foils continuously is better at foiling than anyone who does it occasionally, and they have looked after us and our customers for years.
On a bound book we do more of it than that suggests. We print it andfold the signatures here, then supply those signatures to the binder — so the folding, which is where a book is made square and where a bad one starts, stays with the people who printed it.
What does not change is who you deal with. We schedule it, move it, check it and answer for it, so it stays one job with one point of contact and one invoice rather than becoming yours to coordinate. The 200-page catalog and the case bound book further up this page were both produced exactly this way.
It is also why a foiled cover, a UV-coated piece or a perfect bound book takes longer than a plain one — there is a journey in the middle of it. We build that into the schedule from the start and tell you at the quote, not at the ship date.
Tell us how it has to end up
Bindery is easier to get right when it is considered before the piece is designed — grain direction, creep on a thick stitched book, whether a cover will turn without cracking. Send us the job early and we will tell you what the finish wants.
Vision for Print, Mail & Fulfillment in Pittsburgh
From Concept To Mailbox, We Do It All. Let Broudy Be Your Partner.
or call 412.362.6700