Description

You can usually fold your product yourself by hand, if the quantity is small and if the stock is supple. But for large quantities, you may want to consider having us fold your product. When the stock is too thick, you may want to consider having us score and fold your product.

Requirements

When asking us to fold your product, you will need to provide us with:

• your product,
• the type of fold that you want.

The most common types of fold are described below. For more specific folds, or in case of doubt, please contact us.

Type	Description
Half fold	The half fold is commonly used for brochures and greeting cards. For greeting cards, the stock is usually scored to provide a smoother finish.
Letter fold	The letter fold is mostly used for brochures and mailings. It is the fold that we commonly use when folding a document by hand to insert it in a regular envelope (9.5″ x 4.125″).
Z-fold	The Z-fold is often used for 3 pane brochures, but it may also be used when multiple pages of the same document need to be nested together in an envelope. Note that when used with multi-page documents, this type of folding is very time consuming, and thus costly, as it requires all the pages to be folded individually, unfolded, collated, and refolded together. If you have multiple single page documents, then you may still ask for a Z-fold, but you may want to consider having the documents inserted one “behind” the other in the envelope (rather than nested together).
Accordion fold	The accordion fold is mainly used for brochures with more than 3 panes.
Double parallel fold	The double parallel fold is commonly used for mailing of legal documents (8.5″ x 14″) or documents of up to 9″ x 16″, as the finished product will fit nicely in a regular envelope (9.5″ x 4.125″).
Half plus letter fold	The half plus letter fold is mostly used to mail 11″ x 17″ documents, as the finished product will fit nicely in a regular envelope (9.5″ x 4.125″).

Tips & techniques

The toner used by the digital printing machines is brittle, and it will crack on the fold line. Even on the high end production printing machine that we use, with its super fine toner, cracking will occur. This can usually be mitigated by scoring the product before folding it, but it cannot be eliminated completely. Cracking will be more visible with dark colours than with light colours. Ideally, avoid having any colour on and near the fold lines. This will give your final product a smoother look. If you cannot avoid having colour on the fold lines, then prefer light colours to dark colours on and near the fold lines. Alternatively, if your product doesn’t require variable data printing, you may consider having us print your product on an offset press.

Digital printing machines, unlike their offset counterparts, do not have a totally accurate registration mechanism. This means that there may be a little movement between consecutive sheets as they are fed into the machine for printing. On the high end production printing machine that we use, the tolerance for this movement is very small, but it still exists. Like an offset press, the folding machine has an accurate registration mechanism, but if the product has been printed on a digital machine, folding will not always occur “bang on” on the fold line. For this reason, allow a clearance of at least 0.125″ around the fold lines for all your text and graphics.

Related services

Your product may require scoring prior to folding. This is especially true for thick stock. In case of doubt, please contact us.