Hard cover machines are used to create case bound books. A case bound book is also known as a hard cover book. Case bound books have strong, protective covers, made from cardboard wrapped with paper, cloth, or another durable fabric. A hard cover book is a strong and good quality product.

Hard cover production is a very complicated process, for which you need many different hard cover machines. The process can be divided in 3 parts; book block making, case making and casing-in.

Most casebound books are sewn to give extra strong quality. Endsheets have to be added to the sewn book block and then a stroke of gauze will be glued at the spine of the book to make it strong. This can be done by a perfect binder, like a Muller Martini Bolero, Muller Martini Acoro or Kolbus KM473, KM600, etc. Machines specially designed for book block preparation lines exist as well, such as a Sigloch SB6000 or Muller Martini Kolibri.

The case is produced by gluing cover material on board. Normally you have 3 pieces of board; the front, spine and back. Cutting the board can be done on a in-line board cutter build on the case maker or offline. Once the case is made, it can go through the embossing machine to attach a gold, silver or other colour foil on the case. Mostly the Kolbus PE embossing press is used for this. 

When the bookcase and book block are ready, it can go to the final step, casing –in. The book blocks are fed into the machine, first going to the rounding and backing machine, where the spine gets its square shape or will be rounded. The head-and tail bands will be glued on the spine. Next the outside of the book block will pass glue rollers to attach the case to the book block. After casing-in, the book will pass the forming and pressing station and the book is ready. Some books are getting a dust jacketing wrapped around the book.

In the market for industrial production, Kolbus (BF522, BF524, BF525, BF526, BF511, BF512, BF513, BF527 and BF530) and Muller Martini (Diamant) are the most popular hard cover machines.