Overview:
- The Fellowes Galaxy manual plastic comb binding machine is designed for frequent use in a medium to large office environment.
- This machine offers a sleek contemporary look that is designed to blend into an office environment.
- Although the Galaxy offers a similar look to the Star, Starlet, and Quasar comb binding machines, this machine offers a number of improved features that makes it a great choice for larger volume users and offices.
Strengths / Features:
- The Fellowes Galaxy manual comb binding machine offers an impressive punching capacity of 25 sheets. This is one of the largest capacities that we have seen offered by a manual comb binding machine. Plus, the design used by the punching handle made it easier to punch the maximum capacity of the machine.
- One of the real strengths of this machine is its contemporary design. Many other plastic comb binding machines have an industrial look that sticks out like a sore thumb in an office environment. The Galaxy is designed to fold closed when it is not in use and uses a combination of gray colors and smooth curves that helps the machine to blend in with desktop printers and other contemporary office equipment.
- This machine offers a unique style of comb opener that can be removed and used separately to increase productivity. That allows one person to punch documents and another to insert the pages onto the binding combs. The comb opener uses a separate handle on the side of the machine and it can handle plastic combs up to 2 inches in diameter.
- The Galaxy binding machine offers a rotary edge guide to easily adjust the side margin on the punch. The machine is designed primarily for users who need to bind letter sized documents with flush cut or oversize (8.75″ x 11.25″) covers. However, it also offers the ability to selectively disengage three of the different punching pins for users who are looking to bind half letter size and A4 sized documents.
- The machine has a built in storage tray that slides out of the side of the machine. The storage tray can hold a few plastic combs for convenient access and also offers a document sizing guide that helps you determine the correct size of plastic comb that you need for your documents. The sizing guide will also help you to match up loose plastic combs so that you can determine what size they are.
Weaknesses / Limitations:
- Although the punching capacity on the Fellowes Galaxy is impressive, organizations that do a lot of binding may want to consider a binding machine with an electric punch. Fellowes offers an electric version of this machine for about $150 more. It is an upgrade that some organizations may find worthwhile.
- It was nice to see Fellowes include some disengageable dies on this machine. However, there are still only three releasable punching pins. Many other more industrial manual comb binding machines in this price range offer fully disengageable dies which allow users to punch virtually any size of document.
- The storage tray on this machine seems like it would be a really useful feature. However, it isn’t large enough to hold any real volume of plastic binding combs. The document measurement tool is useful but it would have been nice if they made the comb storage area larger.
Recommendation:
- For a medium or large sized office, the Fellowes Galaxy manual binding machine is an excellent choice. It offers a sleek contemporary design that will blend in with other office equipment without looking industrial.
- It offers an excellent punching capacity, a removable plastic comb opener and the ability to bind documents in a wide variety of lengths and thicknesses.
- However, offices that need to do a lot of binding may want to consider upgrading to a binding machine with an electric punching mechanism.
- This machine is also not a good fit for organizations that need to punch custom length documents or need to bind legal sized sheets. Riveting machinery