Finishing & Screen Printing

Grimm Bindery Solves A Banding Problem

Wednesday 23. January 2013 - When it comes to having a company history, few firms can boast a record equal to Grimm Bindery. Gottlieb Grimm learned the craft of bookbinding from his father, Gelasius Grimm in his native Germany. Emigrating to America 1849, he settled in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1855, he and a partner founded the Madison New Book Bindery, which he later sold, re-purchased, and renamed it the Grimm Book Binderyin 1874.

The bindery has been continuously operated by Gottlieb’s descendants since. Grimm performs a wide variety of binding, including edition binding, library binding, legal and thesis binding, and book repairs and restorations. All of Grimm’s employee’s are true craftspeople, with an average of eighteen years of bookbinding experience. In addition, when demand peaks during the Summer months, Grimm is able to call upon a cadre of local school employees who return year after year to help out.
Because they apply a LOT of head and tail bands (by hand), Bill Grimm and Tracy Lamphere (General Manager) of Grimm were intrigued by the automation possibilities of Zechini’s CAPRI head and tail banding machine. CAPRI can apply both the head and tail band to a book block simultaneously, turning out up to 300 banded book blocks per hour. The system uses a double-sided tape which attaches both to the book block, and the band. As the machine table is adjusted for the book block thickness, it automatically sets, dispenses, and applies both bands.
Now, I would love to tell you that the machine installation was a piece of cake. It was not. Both the band and tape dimensions used by the machine were not the “normal” that Grimm uses. So, we had to find U.S. suppliers for both. Finding a sufficiently “sticky” tape was also a challenge. In addition, since this was the first unit in the U.S., there were lots of little machine issues to be sorted out.
But the folks at Grimm were supremely patient and gracious, and we worked as a team to resolve all of the issues. The result? CAPRI is now in production and banding book blocks! We (at Zechini) are happy with the results and are looking forward to Grimm’s “jump” to automated head and tail banding.