Laminator advice needed please.

[Allan Weyman]

Robert,

I may have said before I did’nt take B & P’s advise to buy a laminator when I bought my Cammjet and it was a bad move. I later bought one of the first Seal Ultra 44’s it had a few teething problems but once you get used to it’s little quirks it is fine. As the name suggests it can take a 44″ roll of media and I have run big 2.5 metre long jobs and provided you get the paper in straight to start with it should not track out. I don’t know what your budget is but this machine is a very reasonable price well under £3000.

You want a machine that you can also use to do mounting (can be lucrative) it involves putting a top laminate film on the media and a clear glue underneath, that’s generally done in one pass and called decaling.
You then de-webb the machine and use it to lay down the decal onto what ever media (Foamulux, foamcore, Correx etc) you select. I also use this method a hell of a lot for applying graphics to board it’s a real time saver.

Of all my purchases (I’ve told you of a few turkeys) I recon the laminator is the most useful piece of kit in my shop and used every day (I even make numberplates with it because it tracks far better than a conventional hand roller) and believe me you won’t regret buying it and you won’t just do wrapping with it.

Allan

[Allan Weyman]

Robert,

I will add to that, if you are offered a bit of training with a machine take it even if you have to pay because there is a steep learning curve with these especially as they are mult-functional, and I got through a few metres of expensive material before I got it right, especially webbing the machine, get that right and you are on your way. I have now got it off to a fine art and can webb the machine with a 3″ strip of foamulux. and waste about 300mm of laminate tops.

Allan

[storeinet]

Allan

Great information.

But some to the terminology went straight over my head and out the window.

I’m looking at digital printing also and want to laminate the fact that you have passed on buy now not later is great, and helps in looking at the bigger picture.

Come on now i’m still wet behind the ears.

But whats “webb” sounds like a dumb question, but hay if you don’t know you don’t know.

How about a demo Allen, now to you this is all day to day stuff but to us wimps, it’ll be a blinding read.

Dan

[Allan Weyman]

Dan,

The term ‘To web the machine’ basically means to load it with media. Be that hot or cold laminate or glue on a roll. When you are encapsulating (I do a lot of this and it is quite profitable) you would ‘web’ the machine with hot melt laminate in both the top and bottom rolls. Work it out it is not like a desktop machine with a pouch although you can use it like that (I often do) so you have to get the laminate through the rollers (webbing is the term). To do this you load the machine lay the top roll leading edge over the hot roller, then bring the lower one up and rest it against it. You then open the rollers up to 3mm and push a piece of scap foamulux (a leader board about 300mm by the width of the rollers, I can get away with 50mm now but it takes practise) through the rollers, this takes the laminate through with it. You then shut down the rollers to zero and run off a bit of lamiante till it is wrinkle free and you are away.

What is essential is lining up the upper and lower media get that straight and the most waste you will need to run out is half a metre get it wrong and it will be several metres before it is wrinkle free.

The term ‘Decaling’ means just that, you are making the print into a decal (as the yanks call it), I am now talking about paper not vinyl as vinyl would only require a top over laminate. Basically it’s the same as above but the machine is either ran cold or to the lowest setting can be benifical and a cold laminate film is used in the top roller. The bottom roller is loaded with the adhesive on a roll which has a silicon paper protecting it (this stays on till you perform the mounting). The top film also has a silcon protective coat but this must be removed at this stage and to do thsi you load the take up roller. This takes up the silicon paper as the laminate is layed down. I can only speak for the Ultra 44 and it’s big brother as I have never used any other machine but you must take care the silicone sheet is winding on correctly or it will wrap it’s self back aroud the rollers (disaster scrap print!)

If I over laminating vinyl I use a thin ( i think it is 40 or 50 micron but I am not in the shop at the moment) laminate in the top roller only nothing in the bottom, I sometimes load the scrap silicon paper into the bottom roller if I am laminating something a lot narrower than the laminate, this stops it sticking to the rollers. Another good trick I am doing now is to cut the lamiante to size more or less, don’t bother to web the machine, stick an initial half inch on to the vinyl and load the vinyl itself into the rollers, Pull the silicone backing off the film and drap it over the top roller and just
pull it off by hand as the vinyl is going through, This is whe a foot pedal is handy. This is a great way for doing a one off as webbing can take about 15 minutes or so and does waste material.

You use this method in the final process of your print mounting (paper decal remember). I fold back half inch of the decal silicone backing, ad stick it down to the edge up to my foamboard, set the rollers to the thicknes of the board and run it through You can use this method for putting vinyl onto Foamulux, magnet sheet etc, and I often laminate a complete colour sheet of vinyl direct to a board, absolutely no winkles, bubbles dust nothing and unusually not only good but extremelly quick.

Hope this has been of some help as I said my experience is only with the Ultra range and there is a learning curve but as my signature says despite what you may hear (and this is for Dewi) ‘It ain’t Rocket Science’.

Allan

[Steve Lamb]

Allan

Interesting stuff. So what are main differences in hot and cold lamination?

What would you use cold laminate for?

What would you use the hot/warm lamination for?

Would be a good investment just to buy a cold laminator? or do you need hot as well?

Cheers

[Steve Lamb]

I forgot to ask

Is a laminator any good for applying application tape to cut graphics? More longer lenghts really
applying cut graphics for substrates?

Cheers

[Allan Weyman]

Rising (funny name),

From my experience don’t bother with a cold laminator. You can buy the Seal Ultra (they do a bigger one now) for not much more than you would pay for a cold laminator.

I print onto FIRST vinyl and I would use a cold laminate for all vinyl products for obvious reasons (you dont want to really supper heat the vinyl. However it can be benifical to set the machine on the lowest temp. even with a cold laminate, it disperses wrinkles better and on cold days lays down better.

If you are doing any sort of paper printing or encapsulating clients work you must use the hot laminate. I charge about £7 for an A1 lamination so it can be profitable and I even do a bit for local Prontaprint and KwallKwik shops so as I say buy a hot machine.

Allan

[Allan Weyman]

Rising,

I have used it for that in the past but unless you are doing a lot it is probably not worth setting up the machine. Also as I said before you have gor to make sure the application paper is not more than a few inches wider than the graphic or the application paper will stick to the rollers. You can over come this buy re-running the waste silicone paper (you will accumalte a bit believe it, it’s also good for wrapping signs!) from the decaling process.

I use two simple machines I bought from DoroTape years ago for laying down application tape, one is 610 wide one is 450mm. They are so good I coan’t be asked to set up the laminator but it will do a good job if you decide to.

[Allan Weyman]

PS

Rising,

I see you was asking about cut graphics to media, yeah thats what I have been saying, it’s absolutely brillant for that make no mistake, My wife moans about it sometimes though because it is so quick to do she gets made redundant and she likes to spend 15 mininutes doing it the old way then another 10 popping bubbles. (Blimey maybe I had better re-phrase that)

Allan

[Steve Lamb]

Cold lamination would be good then for applying graphics (printed and cut)
to various substrates as well as application tape over larger lengths. We don’t have in-house digi print and I’m not loooking to in the near future. I have been offered a cold laminator over 4ft wide and wondered if it was worth having, its going cheap.
I would save money when we buy print in and just apply all printed graphics to what ever substrate ourselves, just get the role of print.

We also have a litho printers next door to us and they just bought a wide epson printer and have asked if we could mount their printed posters to substrates.
I would not get the machine just to mount posters but it would be nice to help our neigbor out, as he has put some very decent contacts our way over the years. Can you cold lam adhesive to the backs of posters?

Oh by the way, Rising is not not my name its the company. Look at the bottom of my posts, Lamby is my nick name from my surname Lamb My first name Steve, but Ive always been called Lamby.

Cheers

[Allan Weyman]

Sorry Lamby I did not see the name on the previous post,

As far as mounting with the cold laminator provided the machine model has a facility for a take up roller and can take two rolls together yes. Infact that is not strickly true as you could do it anyhow but it would be a three stage as opposed to a two stage process. With out a take up roller you would have to laminate by the method I outlined for doing one offs i.e. stripping the silicone paper off by hand.

A bit of heat can help cold laminatig but it is not absolutely neccessary by any means,

Any thing else, laying down graphics onto substrate, applying application tape etc. the cold machine would be fine.

Again I will stress my knowledge is entirely with my Ultra machine.

Allan
Allan

[Steve Lamb]

Allan

The machine has got a take up roller and a foot pedal.
You still didn’t answer all my questions though mate.

Can I over laminate a digi print with anti graffitti, anti scuff film (matt and gloss)?

I heard that if you cold lam over a digi print you can get ‘ghosting’ or a slight haze over the image because its cold.
We do quite a few exterior Architects boards and they require over lam film of some description.
Our digi print supplier does all for us but if, all we bought from them was the print I would save a packet.

Cheers

[Allan Weyman]

Sorry Lamby I thought I covered that, yes definitely you can no problem.

I use the FIRST Vinyl System (Colour lock) and if I want a gloss finish I overlaminate, looks gorgous when finished, like wet glass. If you email me at the shop tomorrow (allan@cadart.com) I will find out the make I use, I don’t think it is the cheapest but it is UV stable and you definitely would not get any ghosting as it is crystal clear to start with so I don’t see how you possible could when applied cold.The only way I could see it misting is if you did apply heat and it effected it in some way or if they were using a hot melt and the settings were not hot enough.

Actually it is called Crystal something or other but I can’t remember at the momen.

Allan.

[Rodney Gold]

Firstly , buy a laminator bigger than the biggest print you can do (in your case you need a 1.6m wide laminator)
Cold pressure lams are the only thing (apart from some low temp melts) that you can do on vinyl , however your Grenadier will also print on paper , and paper is suited to hot lam/encapsulation for protection etc.
DO not buy a laminator that does hot and cold with the same set of rollers , you have to wait a long time for rollers to cool etc. Rather buy a laminator that has dual sets. Alos buy a laminator that can mount , lets say up to 15-25mm thick.
Bad tracking , boat wakes , washboarding etc is because of uneven roller pressure , bad tensioning etc , some cheap laminators will always be problematic. The worst is having to redo a print cos of the laminator.
In your case , You can print , laminate and reload on the machine for cutting. You then offer the client one of your “Tuffguard” decals at a MUCH higher price than unlammed (the lamination is your “tuffguard” or whatever you want to call it)
A good laminator will cost in the gbp 10k range – DO NOT make the mistake of buying a cheapy – you will HAVE to upgrade at some time.
Be aware that a laminator takes 2 ppl to work it on big graphics and can
be harder to use than your digital printer.
Buy one that is easy to web and load and only buy one from a distributor that is prepared to train you extensively. Allan Wymen made most of these points.
A laminator has to be an additional profit centre – to buy an expensive one just for your use only is just not on as it will sit idle for a long time. Your exisiting clients can be tapped as a source for lamination and you can get digital print customers from ppl that come in for lamination
You dont HAVE to use 1.6m wide rolls , you can get narrower ones too and you will find that in general , a 1.6 m roll is not what you will use mostly.
Im gonna repeat this , but DO NOT buy a cheap laminator – you pay for what you get and the cheaper ones are hard to use or waste lamination and can easily destroy a print.
We use a GMP Excellmaster – its a fully automatic laminator with digital controls etc and the agents trained my staff for 2 days and we got excellent results from day 1. There are other uses as well , like applying double sided tapes to various substrates (we do a ton of formica) or applying dry photo resist to stainless steel for the etching industry etc. You can get clear double sided films that you apply to the FRONT of printed graphics so you can mount inside a window without seeing the mounting etc , you can get specialised non slip floor graphic laminates that have a built in public liability (floor graphics arent used much cos of the fear of ppl slipping due to using the wrong overlam)
With adding a double sided tape with a backing , you can actually make substrates that arent traditionally printable , printable and cuttable.
Initially , I thought a laminator was a damn expensive piece of kit to go with a digital printer – but not now.

[Allan Weyman]

I agree 100% with Rodney who’s contribution as always is spot on and very informative.

I would just like to add one thing however, I did buy a budget machine the Seal Ultra 44 and have done my share of cursing at it, but once you understand it’s little quirks it gets the job done. Whereas believe me I would absolutely love to have had the budget to spend £10000+ my accountant and bank manager unamously diasagreed!

My point is the machine I purchased has delivered over the past couple of years and made me money, the choice was budget or nothing and I chose budget, but I will endorse Rodneys comments, if you can afford better, go for it.

Allan