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Print & Lamination issues HPL26500 / Easymount
We are having issues with all materials when printing and laminating. Basically what seems to be happening is that the material appears to be straight on the core but after around 3m of laminating it runs off dramatically or starts to bunch up in the middle causing creasing under the lamination. We have tried printing on our machine and laminating on another (same brand) laminator and printing on various different substrates from different suppliers then laminating, all with the same issue. We have also laminated unprinted material and this runs fine through the laminator. After all our tests we believe it is the printer that is causing the issue but don’y know why. We have also tried reducing the drying and curing temperatures to see if this helps but to no avail. Any suggestions would be helpful or if anyone has had this issue before and has got a solution that would be great. Thanks in advance….
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5 Replies
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what type of materials are causing the problem? I use the same printer and an EM SH1400, always cold to be honest.
If I use a quality (avery etc.) 5yr air release film, poly or cast, I have no bother with it on factory settings.
On a cheap mono (shorter term / stickers etc.) I always reduce the temps by around 5°c pre and post, and also reduce the vacuum down to about 10, this seems to improve things greatly. If I forget to do the above the vinyl often appears to shrink on the backing paper (with or without lam) if left a day or three, causing tunnels of paper, like it’s expanded but no across the width, I’m not sure if it’s the vinyl or the paper that’s the issue – I suspect it’s more paper, but if not noticed and it runs through the lam it can cause creases and undesirables in the finish,
One thing I do find.. I print and lam a lot of pitch advertising jobs at 3m long, I have to ensure the print it sight on the take up roll before feeding it into the laminator or it can do as you say, run off badly, munch up in the middle etc, 3mtr is usually enough for this to happen – if it is going to, and I then make a decision to carry on to the next print or to finish it there and slit the prints before feeding the next in – releasing any tension.
I personally think it’s how I’ve loaded the laminator, as if somehow when I push the leading edge up to the pre-loaded lam film, the centre somehow isn’t as flat as it enters..
No definitive answer and it’s something I’ve worked around without thinking about it, but occasionally still needs active thought to save the job!
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Started out with exactly the same printer and EM SH1600 only mine was worse I could not laminate more than 1m without getting the folds or ripples in the laminate drove me mad for months until I was reading a thread on here where someone mentioned the same problem and explained why leave the laminator setup anyway as most jobs can be quite small and can be done manually by adding laminate on table and then putting through laminator manually. So for two years I did everything manually (yep lay print out, roll laminate over, cut top to stick down, put through laminator).
Feb last year we decided to move from Devon to Scottish Highlands and also took advantage of upgrading printer at the same time, paper graphics were fantastic and had the printer delivered to their office then set it up there before coming down the day before moving and dropping off the new printer and taking the old 26500 away thus leaving the main box and polystyrene printer came with to cover printer ready for removal men. Engineer that attended was tinkering with printer whilst I was still laminating a last minute job (yes day before moving when I should have been packing) well after pissing himself for close to 10 minutes he said would you like me to show you how to do that properly and I explained the problem, first thing he said was I bet you paid for delivery, installation on printer but just delivery on the laminator figuring you can sort it yourself, Yes guilty as charged, he explained then that they needed to be setup properly and a week later when he arrived in Scotland it took him 10 minutes with the Near side panel off to setup the roller alignment apparently the rollers are slightly oval with middle being thicker than sides, if you don’t set them up completely straight one side will turn faster than the other. I didn’t believe it until he took a scrap laminate roll loaded laminator and laminated 15mtrs of poster paper without a mark.
Not sure if this is the same for you but its would be a good place to start checking the rollers are aligned. Apologies for the long story. Good luck
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The main thing I don’t understand is that it just started to happen all of a sudden. We have been using the same vinyl and lam (stickprints and stickybits), same guys setting up machine in the same way then all of a sudden this started to happen. We have printed other vinyl on our Canon and laminated this without any issues so everything seems to point to the printer. Thanks for the responses so far, we are just working around it now by printing with gaps every 3m or so on the roll so that we can stop the laminator and re-setup as required.
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Hi Kevin, sorry I never got back to you and thanks for the response. We have persevered for the last few months only running 3-4m of vinyl through the laminator and then 2 weeks ago got an engineer out. It looked like he was getting somewhere but after he left we found that we could laminate but no longer mount to board due to the way it had been set up. Do you remember who the engineer was that you used for your install as I think we might need to call someone else in?
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Hi Craig
I used paper graphics and pretty sure engineer was Roger. Cannot work out what they could have done to stop you laminating to board but its a shame after getting the lamination side fixed.
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