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Buying a Laminator, advice needed please?
Most of our jobs are produced for short term sales for store chains.
So, we hardly laminate our vinyl. However, there are some jobs that need laminating, and we want to buy a laminator for two main purposes:
1. Applying Clear Vinyl on Acrylic (Reverse Print) and then applying white vinyl over.
2. Laminating Vinyl
3. Laminating Paper (We are starting to produce Printed Laminated Stands for security towers)I guess we need a cold/hot laminator 100-105 cm for 3, and cold laminator for 1-2. Am I right? Which one do you use? I got a nice 3,000GBP for a chinese 105 laminator here, and 6,500 for GMP Excelam 1100 (korean).
What laminator do you use? Is 105 cm enough? If not, Do you use 160+ a lot?
Thanks!
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2 Replies
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i have a cold 65" laminator and a "approx" 5.5m x 1.7m flatbed mounting rollsroller.
i dedicate laminating to just that, and mounting to substrate to "that" machine.
i could be wrong mate, but i think you will be hard pushed on accuracy and maybe even static issues mounting onto anything but small pieces of acrylic.
do not get me wrong, laminators will mount onto rigid substrates. some better than others. but like most things, it comes at an ongoing trail & error cost.anyway… laminating… we are a sign firm and have had our cold laminator for around 8 years. never missed a beat and never restricted us from doing anything sign related.
obviously not suitable for encapsulating etc etc but i do not see that as a day to day requirement for a sign maker.mounting. as i said, if i am mounting any media to a rigid substrate ill use a rollsroller as i find this the best for the job in hand. these machines come in various sizes, so dont be put off by the size. think there is an 8×4 ft model. and ive also suggested to rollsroller, that they create a small table-top one, manually operated cost effective one for small sign shops. whether they listen or not is another thing. but i think this sort of thing is a must for a sign shop…
alternatively, there is the ezy-taper… i see this as the closest to the table top mounter, until its created… 😀
anyway, the ezytaper was created by a very nice australian guy and it is a great bit of kit. unfortunately i think they have had problems with distributors in the UK. but maybe easier sourced in your area.now that said, both ezy-taper and rollsroller are not recomended for laminating things like wraps, vinyls etc they are very much "mounting" machines. but are capable of laminating to an extent.
anyway, just some food for thought mate…
maybe some out there that use a laminator for mounting will be able to advise better. but for me, its eah machine to their own. 😀 -
Rob, thanks for the info. We’ve got a good price on a "serious" 130 cm wide machine, so we got a good hot/cold laminator, for less than 4,000GBP here.
That’s what we bought.
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