New Banner Hemming Machine – VIDEO

[Robert Lambie]

looks a great machine, but doesn’t appear to be able to weld/join a banner.
it does appear to be fast and accurate without much effort at all, but for the same price we bought the leister hot air welder, which will hem and do joins/welds which is an important factor when you need to offer banners deeper or wider than your printer can cope with, so tiling the banner is a must.
also, tape welding gives a good clean look and is fast. but when it comes to very big banners i would turn to a hot air welder for the added bond.
this new machine will have ongoing costs for tape too… hot air machines have none.
all in all i think this is a great machine, excellent for sign shops pumping out banners up to about 20ft long. but they seem to compare it to the big priced welders for huge banners. anything longer than a few months and around 20ft and over i wouldn’t have too much confidence in using tape only.

[Robert Lambie]

Video of this banner hemming machine can be viewed below via our streaming video server.

Please remember folks… you will need to update your QuickTime player to the latest version to view this properly. 😀

* To begin playing the video, click the "Play" triangle icon on the TV screen below.

* Some help files can be found by clicking the text link below the video player screen.

* You will need to be "logged in" to view this video.

* You will need sound (-music)

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Attachments:

bannerhem1ref.mov

[George Zerbino]

Looks a good gadget, but seems a bit pricey.

[Robert Lambie]

i agree george… fantastic machine but limited for the $3495.00 price tag.
the leister hot air welder comes in at £1600 and £300 for finishing kit.
its slower and a bit clumsy but does a very good job and not limited. well not unless your selling cheap as chips plastic banners.

[George Zerbino]

Rob, yes…at two dollars per pound that’s about £1800, and on top of that there’s the cost of tapes.

I make my banners using the tapes, admittedly I’m not as fast as what they show on the video, but not that slow either 😀

In my view a more realistic price of £300 would make them fly off the shelves.

By the way, when you mention the hot air one you use, what is that finishing kit?
And how safe is the hot air welder to use (not from a health & safety point of view, I mean as getting banners hemmed up wrongly – when I saw one being used at SignUK I was not very impressed 😮 )

Regards,

George Z.

[Robert Lambie]

hi George…

i have added another video to this thread showing the leister banner welder. (same one i have)
the finishing kit is the hand held device you see in the second part of the video.

i use tape allot of the time but if the banner is big or needs to be strong ill use the welder rather than tape.
the biggest benefit of the welder is you can make almost any size of banner, printed or not.
the welder is clumsy in my view. although looks easy to operate, you do need to have the knack or you stand to ruin allot of banners and burn the hell out your hands in the process. 😕

the following attached video doesnt have sound this time. just thought ide mention that before you think something is up.

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Attachments:

bannerweld2ref.mov

[George Zerbino]

Thx Rob.

[Chris Dowd]

We have the Leister Welder too, great bit of kit, we finish all our banners with it now. We don’t have the hand held tool, don’t see the need for it (yet).

From a H & S point of view though…… how the hell did it get passed!!!

You do have to know what your doing with it, and be careful where your putting your hands, as for burning banners, we’ve never had a ruined one yet and probably done close on 1000 banners with it!

[Robert Lambie]

we dont have finishing kit either chris, but depending on the grade of banner you use, it is very easy to make a mess of the last two corners when hemming as the heat makes it shrink in on itself. (very hard to explain when typing so i wont try) :lol1:

im with you on the h&s side of things… the temp on the air piece is hundreds of degrees… having no handles or real way of maneuvering the machine you constantly changing grip and trying to get a grip of it. meanwhile this air valve is blowing out all this heat in your face or in the direction of your arm. 😕

wasting banners happens time to time… not often i agree, an easy way to do it is if you change material/supplier from time to time.
you have to trial and error samples to get the required heat settings without buckling the banner. with that in mind… i welded a banner and it just shriveled up and was wasted. it was only about 8-10 inches of the banner but it ruined the whole thing. reason was, current suppler had ran out of stock and the new supplier. although giving same grade of material. it was different and well… the rest of the story went in the bin :lol1: as soon as the current heat settings on the machine hit the new banner it was like cling film in a frying pan :lol1: lowered the temp and all was fine.

[Chris Dowd]

We keep to one brand of banner (Xerox) we’ve found this to be an excellent product, and we always keep a couple of rolls in stock, additionally, our supplier (who is on the same Industrial Estate) also keeps a couple of rolls in stock just for us, so we have access to up to 5 rolls same day. (otherwise normally next day).

Sticking to the same brand we never have the need to alter the temperature on our welder.

[George Hanlon]

Hi Robert

Thanks to your advice we have bought a Leicester BANAWELD machine. Can you suggest a

Temperature
Speed
Airflow

For Solid 550gsm banner and 350sm Mesh banner materials.

Thanks

George Hanlon

[David Rogers]

Anybody give me the name of a supplier of a ‘reasonable’ heat welding machine? Looked online – but no joy for the ones mentioned.

Cheers

Dave

[Robert Lambie]

ide call liester and they will give you the rep in your area, the guy that arrived with ours was based in paisley. we bought ours 3 years ago, cost about £1600 for the machine and £300 for hand held finisher.
i dont have contact info handy but if you look on the signuk website they should be listed there as they are at the show each year.

[Chris Dowd]

We got our’s from City & West End Solutions, however, I think they come from Welwyn tools or something like that.