GBC C250 Plastic Comb Binding Machine Review
The GBC CombBind C250 has been one of the most popular plastic comb binding machines available on the market for more than a decade. Also known as the Ibico Kombo, this machine can be found at elementary schools and businesses across the country. The C250 is a manual binding machine designed for producing documents, presentations, reports and proposals with GBC plastic comb binding spines.
Features:
The C250 is a fully featured comb binding machine. It includes fully disengageable dies that allow you to prevent any one of the pins on the machine from punching. The disengageable dies make it possible to bind documents that are either shorter or longer than 11″. The open throat design of the binding machine means that it will be capable of punching documents that are legal or longer with a 2 step punching process.
This machine also includes an adjustable depth of punch margin. This feature allows you to adjust the distance of the holes from the edge of your paper. This feature is important for ensuring that the pages of your documents turn freely when using small sized combs. It is also important for binding large sized books in order to keep the weight of the book from tearing the pages out of the binding. The holes should be close to the edge of the document for smaller sized books and further away for large sized books. The fact that the GBC C250 has this feature means that it is capable of using combs that are as small as 3/16″ and as large as 2″.
The C250 also includes a high quality comb opener that is capable of opening both large and small spines. The handle on this machine operates the punch when pulled forward and operates the opener when pushed backwards. It also has a large waste drawer to store the paper chads produced when punching your documents and covers.
With all of these features, the C250 is a very complete Comb Binding system. However, the manual punch included on this machine is only able to punch a moderate number of sheets per cycle. For high volume users, the repetitive motion required for punching large volumes of paper is not ideal. Such applications would generally warrant an solution with an electric punch.
Construction:
The overall construction of the GBC C250 comb binding machine is very solid. With the exception of just a few small parts, it is composed almost completely of metal. The solid construction of this machine makes it an ideal choice for use by schools and offices where the machine might take a little bit of a beating. However, if by chance you were to break your machine, parts are widely available for the machine.
Conclusion:
The GBC CombBind C250 is a great comb binding machine. It includes all of the features that most users would ever need in a manual plastic comb binding machine. This makes it ideal for organizations that do a moderate amount of binding or for companies who don’t want to have to worry about replacing their machine in a year or two. However, this machine is not ideal for high volume users or for applications where time is of the essence in getting your documents bound. For those applications, you might want to consider a machine with an electric punching mechanism.
