Akiles CoilMac ECI Review

By: Jeff McRitchie
Submitted: 2009-11-06 15:15:09
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Perhaps the most popular coil binding systems on the market, the Akiles CoilMac ECI is meant to provide a solution for businesses that aim to do a moderate amount of coil binding, probably for in-house documents and reports. Here is a brief overview of this machine and some of its strengths and weaknesses as we see them.

Strengths:

  1. The punching capacity of the CoilMac ECI is stated at seventeen pages per lift, and we did find that it was capable of reaching that number. We discovered however, that it was much easier and more productive to keep the number to around fifteen sheets. That is still a pretty decent punching capacity for a manual machine like this, and we also found that it punched two plastic cover sheets at one time without any problems.
  2. The CoilMac ECI has a coil inserter located at the front of the machine. Inserters make the binding process a lot easier and we found that this one worked quite well. We really liked the foot pedal operation which allowed us to keep both hands on the book while the coil is being inserted. For larger sized books, you will still need to insert the coils by hand, but that is the case with any machine.
  3. One of the great features of the CoilMac ECI is that it has dies that are disengageable. What this means is that when you are doing your punching, you can disable some of the punching pins to accommodate different sizes of documents. This will enable you to produce nice clean punches on letter, A4 and A5 sized documents. That is a lot of flexibility, and will fill the needs of the vast majority of the documents that most organizations will be producing. However, even if you find the need to punch sheets that are longer than that, the CoilMac ECI features a continuous punching guide that allows you to use a two punch process to do the job.
  4. The depth of punch margin control on the CoilMac ECI is also a nice touch. This is a feature that makes it much easier to gauge how far from the sheets' edge you are punching your holes. For larger sized books, you will want to punch the holes further from the edge in to ensure usability and durability.

Weaknesses:

  1. The CoilMac ECI is a nice machine with some great capabilities, but it is still a manual machine when all is said and done. All that means is that if you are a larger organization that will be doing a fair amount of binding, and/or binding larger books on a regular basis, you may want to consider purchasing a machine with an electric punch. They are considerable more expensive, though, so you will have to weigh the pluses and minuses yourself.
  2. As stated above, the CoilMac ECI's coil inserter won't work with most larger sized coils. This is not uncommon for inserters that are attached to binding machines as part of a system. You will have better luck with a standalone inserter, but even a standalone won't do larger books all that well.
If you are interested in more information about the Akiles CoilMac ECI Coil Binding Machine, you should really check out MyBinding.com. They offer a great price on this machine and they even offer Free Shipping on all orders over $75. MyBinding.com carries the entire line of Akiles binding equipment along with one of the largest selections of Spiral Coil Binding Supplies that you will find on the internet. Choose from more than fifty colors and twenty-seven sizes.

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