RAYSON TD1202 Binding Machine, 3:1 Pitch Wire Binder

I don’t know what everyone else is doing but after following instructions and YouTube videos this thing will not work right. It gets caught on a single 20lb paper and sometimes just gets stuck on nothing. Forget about doing one card stock it literally can barley make it through printer paper.

There is some learning curves to get the machine to do exactly what you want. We homeschool and this works well for us. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to find 3:1 pitch wire binders that are one inch or larger. I bought a cheaper/plastic 2:1 pitch machine to bind a few larger workbooks with larger wires. For our purpose it is worth having both.

Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with my purchase of this hole punch and binder. It has moments when it tends to be very fussy, and when they happen, it can be a serious pain to disassemble and reassemble what was made. But 9 times out of 10, it’s easy to use, efficient, great for the price, and exactly what I’ve needed. It happened to come pre-set with the hole punch settings I needed, so I haven’t had reason to fiddle much with the margin adjuster. The binder, however, is really finicky, and has quite a learning curve, considering how straightforward it appears to be. Additionally, the paper directions and manufacturer’s instructional videos leave a LOT to be desired. Thankfully, I ran across a random blog post that was more informative, and it helped me solve the little tick tack problems that were not only driving me crazy but leading to me putting out a subpar product.

FIRST BIG TIP:
The binding press is magnetic, and for the wires to crimp correctly, the wire has to be completely captured by the magnetic element. The best way to do this is to rest what you’re binding on the little silver holder, place the wire open-ended toward the back of the machine, and then run your finger along the top wire (above the book you’re binding) as well as the bottom (underneath what you’re binding) to make sure it’s flush. Otherwise you’ll end up with a binding that’s still slightly open on one side while over-crimped on the other, which leads to having to disassemble the whole thing and start over.

SECOND BIG TIP:
This may be a given for the pros, but for someone who’s never used a machine like this before, it’s likely not something you’d think about. When you’re placing what you’re binding on the coil rings, place the back of what you’re binding face-to-face with the cover. Don’t assemble it as what seems like common sense, with the cover on first, then the paper, then the back. Assemble with the side of the back cover you want to be seen facing up, the side of the front cover you want to be seen facing down on top of it, then your paper. Otherwise the seam won’t be hidden, and the pages turn into a nightmare of getting caught up in the binding and becoming really hard to flip and manage.

And then, even still, sometimes it’s just fussy, and things go wrong even when you set everything up right. Patience is key. Aside from that, I really don’t know what else to recommend, as I’ve read that the more expensive version of this machine is even more prone to acting up.

If you’re on a budget, and you’re patient, and not a complete perfectionist, it does the job well. Otherwise you may want to continue your search, or research until you’re comfortable in going with another brand entirely.

We had far too many booklets to make to fuss with this machine. Getting the holes lined up properly was not easy. It didn’t punch as many pages as advertised without major work. And putting on the wire binding and getting it crimped down nicely was a major pain. It might work well if you’re doing a small batch with not a lot of pages but it wasn’t for us – we needed to make over 50 presentations with over 30 pages in each and found out very quickly that there was a big tradeoff in time and energy. IF we got good looking product, it took far too much time to do it. Had to return it. (they made that process very easy for us though!)

I love this machine. Easy to use.