My old GBC printer jammed halfway through a 50-copy zine run

I was trying to print 50 copies of my new mini zine last Saturday in my basement in Cleveland. The GBC DocuBind 180 I got at a garage sale for $30 jammed on page 12 of every single copy. I had to pull out the drum, clean off toner with a paper towel, and reset it each time. Took me 5 hours to get through the whole batch instead of the usual 2. Has anyone else had trouble with older binding machines acting up with heavy cardstock?

2 comments

2 Comments

caseyc306d ago

Man, I feel your pain on this one. I had a similar nightmare with an old binding machine I picked up at an estate sale - the roller kept grabbing the cardstock at a weird angle and folding the corners. I spent a whole Sunday trying to get through 30 copies of a poetry chapbook for a friend. Had to use a butter knife to gently coax each page through without smudging the toner. That GBC 180 is a beast when it works, but when it decides to act up, you're basically doing a manual assembly line.

brianellis6d ago

yeah i had the exact same problem with my old gbc 270 last year. what finally worked for me was running each sheet through a quick tap on the edge before loading it into the feeder. i set up a little station with a stack of cardstock on my left and just gave each page a gentle smack against the table to knock the static loose. also i figured out if i fed the cardstock in at a slight angle like 15 degrees it would grab better than straight on. saved me like an hour on my next run of 40 copies.