Let's Blog Office

A Few Tips about Buying Shrink Wrap Systems

Shrink wrap has become one of the most popular forms of packaging today, partly due to its low cost and leading many business owners to ask us, what is the highest quality, affordable shrink wrap system for my small business?  Just like anything else with your small business you want your packaging operations to have maximum efficiency and effectiveness.  With so many shrink wrap systems designed for different applications, performance levels and budgets we’re confident that after answering a few questions you can design a highly effective and efficient packaging operation with your new shrink wrap system.

A few questions we find most helpful in answering include:

How large are the packages I need to shrink wrap?  Are they all relatively the same in size or do they vary?

How much space do I have to place the machine and does that amount of space or location need to be flexible?

How many products do I need to shrink wrap?  Several a minute or several an hour?

While not all answers to these questions will be the same for all small businesses at MachineRunner we most often find the Traco Deluxe SuperSealer Portable Shrink Wrap System to be the high quality, affordable solution to your shrink wrapping needs.  With available models ranging from 13’’ to 40’’ in length it’s perfect for shrink wrapping products the size of a small book to products as large as gift baskets and framed art.  It’s smaller size, weight and portability also makes it a dream for small businesses that don’t have a lot of dedicated space to packaging or could see that space change location, expand or shrink in size.  The super sealer’s ability to package several products per minute means your products are ready to leave your shelf just that much faster.  In addition to all of this once the Traco SuperSealer arrives at your business you literally just plug it in to one regular 110v outlet, turn the machine on and immediately start sealing.  With a two year warranty, a starting sales price of $279 and the reputation for being the number 1 selling portable shrink wrapping machine with over 150,000 in use worldwide today it’s clear why we think the Traco Deluxe SuperSealer Portable Shrink Wrap System is the answer to your packaging needs!

HSM Digital Shredder wipes your hard drive

Every law office or government agency needs this! I just found out about a new technology that is called a Digital HardDrive Erase Shredder. It appears to be the  fastest way to safely delete data from your hard drive. So far, I have only discovered one brand that has one of these on the market - HSM. Here is a bit more info that I found out about the shredder. If you know anything about them, or anyone else making them, please let me know!

A Digital Shredder utilizes “Secure Erase”, the safest and fastest technology to date, to delete the data. The hard disk is irrevocably erased and perfectly conditioned for re-use. This recycling is also good for the environment. The shredder is user-friendly, thanks to the touchscreen and the intuitive design. No need for lengthy set-up and training processes.

An eraser will remove the data from a hard drive instantly and the hard drive will be ready for reuse.

The Advantages:

• Secure Erase cannot be activated in normal operating mode. This prevents activation by accident or by a virus.
• The erasing process also reliably erases defective sectors on the hard drive that overwriting software, for example, cannot detect.
• On average, Secure Erase is 8 times faster than software that overwrites in triplicate.
• Once the Secure Erase has been completed, the hard disk sends a confirmation code to the Digital Shredder, providing total process reliability.
• The US guidelines on media disposal describe Secure Erase as “safer than overwriting”. According to these guidelines, Secure Erase is more effective than any overwriting process, no matter how often it is repeated. This method is as safe, if not safer than, the demagnetising process assessed by the NSA.
• If Secure Erase is not possible because the hard disk is too old, the Digital Shredder will detect this and automatically offer an alternative: overwriting the data three times.

Here is a chart that shows the different ways that you can delete data - and why this method is so effective.

I found a HSM DS-200  for sale at iShopShredders and for only about 13K...not bad for a large office that needs to get rid of secure documents. Any law firm or accounting firm needs one of these. Check it out 

Bookbinding at home

I just found a good review of the Rollabind Crafter's Kit over at DIYPlanner. I keep meaning to write about this kit, but they have done such a thorough job at DIYPlanner. It comes with a personal punch and binding disks, and is affordable for binding at home or on smaller projects (1-2 books at a time).

Here's the review:

Got my Rollabind Crafter's kit today! Hooray! I bought it for roughly $10 cheaper than the Rollabind site itself, from a new site called "KeepOnCrafting.Com". They're having a grand opening sale, and with shipping the total cost was just under $49 for the Crafters Kit 500.

On opening the kit, here are my thoughts:

The personal punch is OK, the little alignment gizzy works but it took a minute for me to understand how to operate it. The Rollabind site has photo instructions for it that I read a week or two ago. The alignment thingy does have a paper clamp so your paper stack doesn't wiggle, which works fine for the small amount of paper you can punch. It also has a disc liner-upper that helps you get the punched paper onto the rings. This is helpful and does work. One bummer: you have to fold the ring liner upper out to line up your paper, then tuck it under to punch, then fold it out again to line up the rings. This is not a good workflow. This gizzy really isn't for 'on the fly' use like you'd have in the office adding a new sheet to your ring binder.

The kit itself is not really necessary. The plastic box I saw in the picture had a lid, what I got instead was a drawer organizer with no lid. All the discs were held in the organizer with shrinkwrap. So now I'll have to repackage the discs in little boxes or bags to keep them from escaping, since I don't have a drawer to put the organizer in.

The 120 discs it came with stack up this way: 60 discs of the microscopic size, 20 each in three colors. I got baby blue, baby pink, and black. Also 60 discs of the next size up, 20 of each in three colors. I got black, red, and transparent. There were no samples of any larger sizes at all. So, this package is slightly useful, but may not actually fit the gizmo I wanted to make, which may have as much as an inch of paper to bind. We'll see how it works out, I might separate the components into individual books, not sure. However, I will be able to use all of these teeny discs, because I have come up with a bundle of different ideas for books to bind up--from a gardening log to a wine log to my kids' artwork..

The puncher will punch .020" rigid vinyl, but only just barely. I have a bunch of this stuff lying around from previous projects, and I'm going to use it for covers! Whee! It will punch about 5 sheets of 24lb paper comfortably. I have to line up the puncher twice to do my quarter-letter books, which could make the punching process tedious, but I need to get some mileage on it before I spring $50 for the desktop punch.

I am WAY impressed with how the rings and punched paper interact. I looked at the Rolla notebooks in my local Staples and was totally underwhelmed. The rings fit too tightly in the holes and the notebooks were stiff. Likewise there was a lot of shredded paper around the punches making the situation worse. But this, with the personal punch and my own good paper, is far superior. I am so pleased. I took about 20 pages of scraps, punched them up and bound them in a very short time (with pink microscopic rings) and the book was basically perfect. Easy to move the pages, easy to open and close the book. Awesome. Less than 15 pages, though, is a bit floppy for this kind of binding, even with the microscopic rings. At that point you're probably better off with a staple or stitching.

OK, so final impressions. The personal punch is worthwhile, but you'll get tired of fiddling with the alignment thingy if you have too many pages to punch. You might get more discs for your money with this grouping, but it probably won't be the bunch of rings you'd buy if you picked your own colors. It also might not be the sizes you'd pick.

My suggestion: Get the personal punch if you're doing hipsters or small books. The desktop punch is probably better for the bigger books, higher volume punching, or if you want the flexibility to remove punches in an artistic way. The kit is a nice sampler, but it's definitely not a color scheme for the office unless your office is very creative. :) You might be better off grabbing a few a la carte boxes of rings if you want dignity and sobriety, or if you have bigger stacks of paper in mind.

Anyway, love it! I'm so excited and I can't wait to get my 'hipster' done! And all the other books I've got on my mind now..

shris

See original review at diyplanner.com