Check out our careers page to find out more about working at Pacific Bindery Services and about a job opportunity working in our front office. If you like to work in a team environment, with lots of competing priorities, and if you have a great attitude, excellent communication skills (written and verbal), are highly organized and efficient (and can support the rest of our office to be so as well), then please consider applying for our job.
We have researched, found, and recently completed comprehensive testing of, a new high strength EVA (HS-EVA) for your short run perfect binding jobs. Effective immediately, this perfect binding adhesive is the standard on our short run perfect binder and provides an excellent solution for digitally printed projects.
This HS-EVA provides you with the following characteristics for Perfect Bound work (these characteristics are in relation to standard EVA, not PUR):
A key benefit of this new adhesive is that we can produce short run work on our #3 perfect binder, with reduced overs and shorter make-ready times, and therefore offer this service at a better price than running the project with PUR on our 21 pocket perfect binder. As with most new products, this glue is more expensive than the standard EVA –we have not increased or changed our prices and are absorbing the additional time for cleaning and preparation required when using the HS-EVA – to ensure that you get the best value from this improvement.
We have committed 100% to this new HS-EVA on our short run perfect binder. You will save on cost and receive a quality product. To find out more, please contact our Production Coordinators or Estimators at 604-873-4291.
Note: While the new HS-EVA is a substantial improvement over the standard adhesive used in perfect binding, it does not have all the characteristics of Polyurethane Reactive (PUR) glue – we still believe that PUR is the best available adhesive for binding high use; thick, thin, and/or specialty substrates; heavily inked pages; and other high-end uses.
Pacific Bindery Services Ltd. (PBS) is proud to announce that we have won two of three Finishing Awards at the Canadian Printing Awards. The awards were announced at the 10th Annual Gala in Toronto on November 13th, 2015.
PBS won gold for the St. Michelle String of Pearls catalogue and bronze for the PBS Holiday Card collection (a series of Christmas cards that were designed and produced in-house with laser cutting, foil stamping and embossing techniques).
An independent panel, judging with a blind scoring system, determined the Gold, Silver and Bronze winners in 21 Quality Printing categories.
Two perfect bound books are bound into the same ‘Z’ cover.
We folded the cover on the outside hinge of the thin book side as we would for a standard 6 pp gate cover. We did this so the ‘end’ of the cover did not interfere with the side glue of the thick book when bound on the binder. Perfect bound the 32 pp self without a cover – spine glue only and trimmed to size.
Extreme care was needed to ensure that the book was trimmed to the right size – which was somewhat of an unknown at this binding point. We perfect bound the thick book without the cover.
We needed to take extreme care to ensure that the book was face trimmed only to the right size so that all the components fit in the end. Head and foot trim was done on the last pass. In the third pass the thicker book was bound with the 6 pp cover. We ground the spine to fit the face edge. It was bound such that the gate of the cover is on the bottom of the trimmer as we could only trim 1 book at a time because of fold out protrusion from the front of the book.
Cutting the cover was extremely critical. Also needed to ensure that the 32 pp (already processed and trimmed) fit the cover which needed to be flush at the face. Cover had all 4 scores for the 32 pp pre-scored. Once the thick book portion was complete, cover was reverse folded and 32 pp book was d-taped into spine of cover. 88 pp book was PUR glued, 32 pp was hot melt glued. All three passes on our 21 pocket perfect binder.
PBS is pleased to announce that our finishing work was recognized with two Product of Excellence Awards of Recognition by the Binding Industries Association (BIA). This award of recognition program is an annual industry event that is ‘blind’ judged by industry leaders and peers.
One award was for our own in-house designed and produced Season’s Greetings card series (four unique laser cut and foil stamped cards, envelopes and foil stamped bands) and the other award was for the foil stamping and embossing of the cover of a book that we also stitched for Redcraft Greetings for their Holiday Card Collection 2015.
Pacific Bindery Services Ltd. (PBS) was named Graphic Finisher of the Year, 2014 and winner of the Best of Show, 2014 by the International Binding Industries Association for the exceptional work done in PBS’ ‘Big Book’ self-promotion.
This recognition by the Association is for the outstanding promotional piece designed by Mia Lupton, Millennia Graphics. The copywriting of the content was by Kris Bovay, printing by Hemlock Printers, soft touch lamination by R & M Laminating, and outstanding bindery and finishing techniques by the outstanding production team at Pacific Bindery Services.
The book demonstrates a wide range of PBS’ services including: mechanical binding, cover wrap prototype design and production, foil stamping, embossing, debossing, die making, die cutting, laser cutting, laser etching, laser rasterizing, fold-outs, glued pocket folders, kitting and assembly.
In addition to demonstrating a variety of services, PBS also provides valuable content and advice throughout the book in terms of best practices and techniques for binding and finishing.
Title of Entry: North Growth A/R
750 books. 36 pp + Z Cover perfect bound book attached to a 12 pp self-covered saddle stitched book.
The Z Cover is a 6 pp accordion folded to size cover with preapplied D-tape inside the spine along where the side glue would be on a perfect bound book. The 12 pp self-covered saddle stitched book was then stitched with one hold stitch in the middle.
After this process, the 12 pp self-covered saddle stitched book is then manually stitched into the Z cover with two regular stitches. Our perfect binder, at the same time, is putting together the 36 pp + cover perfect bound book where the cover is the same stock as the text pages to form a book block.
For the perfect bound book, all the text and cover were wrong grain. Both the saddle stitched book and the perfect bound book had to be trimmed to fit into the Z cover. Upon closer inspection of this book, you would notice that the Z cover is a “false cover” for the perfect bound book. The D-tape along the spine in the inside acts as the “side glue” to this perfect bound book.
With some creative thinking, this process was able to simulate two processes sharing a common cover, something that we had never done before.
Title of Entry: Bell Quick Start
36,750 books. 64 pp self covered 3” x 4 ½”. This book was gathered, stitched, and trimmed.
This book was run 2 up and 5-knife trimmed as the book is a small sized book. The minimum book size for our saddle stitcher is 3” x 3 ¾”. The width was achievable with a high-folio lip to a minimum of 4 5/16” wide. This book also had bleeds throughout. When a cover is flood printed black the way this one was, it is easy to scuff the front or back, therefore, extreme caution and careful handling was needed.
800 books. Cut, collate, PUR perfect bound and trimmed 72 pp + cover, 8” x 4”, then insert into sleeves and individually shrinkwrapped.
This book is a postcard publication made from designers with a connection to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. It’s a beautifully made book on 11pt gloss cover with a cover on 20 pt cover and laminated on one side. Because this book consisted of all cover stock, it was necessary to use polyurethane reaction (PUR) glue.
The inside pages were all pre-perforated along where the postcard can be ripped off. The sleeves were preformed with an open end and fits snugly around the book. The difficulty in this job is that it is a landscape book with heavy cover stock.
The entire book had to be pre-collated, then handfed onto the perfect binder. Another difficultly encountered was that there was type extremely close to the spine, therefore resulting in less of a grind in order to ensure text was still readable.
If too much or too little grind was taken off of the book, the book would not fit squarely into the sleeve. As you can see from the final product, the book fit perfectly into the sleeve and this work was recognized by BIA’s Certificate of Merit award for PBS at the annual product of excellence awards.
1500 books. Cut, fold, gather, PUR perfect bound and trimmed 7 5/8” x 10”, 98 pp + cover. Then cut, and fold dust jacket and wrap flaps to inside front cover and inside back cover.
Just like the theme of the YVR annual report this year, this book is definitely “beyond, every day”. The inside of the dust jacket tells you to “judge this book by its cover”.
The dust jacket is something that we’ve not seen before, with a beautifully sturdy design that could not have been done without collaboration with a bindery.
Throughout the book, the lineups and crossovers are accurate to the pixel. As annual reports are often used to show the success of a company, the design must flow through not only the printer, but the binder for the final result to show through. There are two foldouts throughout the book, one being a 6-page foldout, both are inset 1/8” at the face.
The YVR report has definitely gone above and beyond, every day.
310 books. Cut, collate, PUR perfect bind and trim 32 pp + cover. The final trimmed size of the book is 3 ½” x 4 ½”, while our specifications states that the minimum trimmed size on our perfect binder is 3 7/8” x 5 7/16”.
This was achieved through perfect binding the book at the size of 4” x 5 ¾” then trimming the final book offline to 3 ½” x 4 ½”.
In addition to a small size, the book was extremely thin, about 3 mm in thickness. Our minimum thickness is 2 mm. The combination of a thin book with a small size was not the greatest challenge of all.
If you look inside, the book has beautifully aligned crossovers throughout the entire book, not only from left folios to right folios but also from the right folios to the next page. To achieve such a high quality turnout could only be done through a very strict quality control process found at our plant.
This is a piece of work we are all proud of.
800 books. Cut, gather, PUR perfect bound and trimmed, 11” x 11” 13-2 pp French-folded sheets + 2-2 pp sheets + cover.
This book is a delicious work of art and the award of recognition from Binding Industries Association recognizes that; from the rich imagery to the textured paper to the large format all work together to result in an outstanding book with a high degree of difficulty. Text pages were supplied as pre-folded French folded sheets. As a result of French folded text pages, the book must first go through a pre-gather on the perfect binder, and the cover must be pre-scored and flush at face.
The type of stock used for the cover page, Curious Soft Touch Cover, was a challenging paper stock as it was difficult to separate one sheet from another. The spine grind had to be exact or else the cover would not be flush with the text inside. A normal perfect bound book would not have a problem with keeping a flush face as it would be trimmed three sides. But with French folded sheets, the cover had to fit perfectly around the book block with little room for movement.
27,100 books. 18 pp + 8 pp double gatefold + cover + tipped on 16 pp SC saddle stitched book to IBC with fugitive glue. The cover was a double thick cover pre-scored and diecut net at face with 1/8” overhang head and foot.
The total thickness of the cover was 22.2 pts thick, requiring PUR glue. The insides were provided as four, six and eight page signatures with an 8 page double gatefolder, pre-folded and inset 1/8” from face. The most challenging part of all was the tipping of a 16 pp SC saddle stitched book to the inside back cover.
It isn’t often you see a saddle stitched book within a perfect bound book. The amount of handwork to attach the saddle stitched book required a three-man team. One to apply the glue and two to immediately stick the book into the back cover within seconds before the glue dried. The time constraints in tipping made this book an exceptional one-of-a-kind annual report.