Introducing the Coiler

Hi! Tina T. back again. I am writing most of this when the print shop is quiet and no one else is here yet. It's kind of nice to have quiet time, but sometimes I miss the hustle and bustle of the noise as the machines work. I meant to include a photo of myself in my last blog and forgot, so it will be included today. Last time I wrote about the machine that I seem drawn to the most. Today, I will talk about the machine I like the least. That machine is the big coiling machine. This machine will do almost all book sizes but we use it to coil books 16mm to 32mm. Anything smaller will be done by hand or on our smaller coiler machine. Larger stuff is almost always done by hand. By that, I mean holding the book by hand and using a mechanical roller to feed the coil onto the book and using a mechanical/manual cutter/crimper to finish the book before boxing them up.

Let me give you a little bit of a description of the coiling machine in case you can't see the photo. It is a large machine that has an area for you to set the book in, an area to place the coil, an area for cutting the coil, and an area to catch the book when it is done. This machine can seem daunting at first but you get used to operating it fairly quickly. The first thing you need to do is adjust the machine for the book/coil size you are using. We do this by attaching curved blades for the size needed. Then you have to adjust the cutter/crimper blades to the proper size of coil as well. This ensures that the coil is not cut too long or short. Once the book and coil have been placed into their areas on the machine, you press a foot pedal that activates the machine. The coil is advanced by rollers into the punched holes in the book. Once the coil is fed, the machine drops the book down using gravity into the cutter/crimper. It quickly cuts and crimps the coil and holds it there until the next book is coiled and ready to drop down. When it is ready to be released, it is then pushed up and over the blades to fall into the catch bin where the books stack up until you empty it.

Now that I have described the machine and how it works, I want to tell you why this is my least favorite machine. To put it in a nutshell, it is because I seem to have problems with coils not feeding properly, though I am aware that this is mostly operator error on my part by not having the book set properly. The holes on the book have to line up with the holes on the covers. This can be an issue because we do not run the covers through the automated punch machine. They are hand punched on a foot pedal punch that will only punch a small amount of paper at one time. The covers are generally thicker paper than the pages of the books, so it's easier to hand punch them. The book needs to be placed with the coil edge flat against one surface while the bottom edge of the book needs to be placed flat against the base edge. If the book is the least bit crooked, the coil won't go. I might also add that I am short, so it is not easy to see if the book is setting properly, which means I have to go by feel for most of it. Once I finally get the book and coil set properly, the coiling goes smoothly.

While the coiling machine is not my favorite to operate, I am not complaining. Every job has tasks we really enjoy and tasks we aren't so fond of. I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into more of what happens in the My Father's World print shop. I hope you all have a blessed day.