Laminators

[dhicks]

Hello All,

 

I seem, slightly randomly, to be in charge of the laminating equipment - I guess it comes under "print finishing". We seem to do an awful lot of laminating, with two laminating machines in the staffroom for our classroom assistants to use. Those machines keep conking out - generally laminating pouches getting stuck and melting onto the rollers. These aren't cheap laminators from Argos, either, these are reasonably heavy-duty machines from a speacialist supplier. However, it seems they aren't quite up to our volume / style of use, so I'm looking at alternatives.

 

Has anyone had much experience with cold laminating systems? I understand there's systems a bit snazzier than just simple self-adhesive pouches. Do they produce decent results? Are they easy to use? The laminators are in the staffroom and free for everyone to use, so they need to be simple to operate. I've seen some cold laminators that seem to be a simple couple of rollers with a hand-cranked handle, which most people should be able to get the hang of - does that sound right?

 

Does anyone use continuous-roll hot laminators? So instead of individual pouches we'd have a machine that uses rolls of laminating film. Again, are they pick-up-and-use easy, or do they require training?

[plexer]

Do they not come with a carrier card? that way you should never have a pouch melting itself to the roller.

 

Ben

[6Foot2]

We have two continuous roll laminators used in our Reprographics Department. As far as I know the only training required is:

 

1. Turn on the heat and allow it to get to temperature.

2. Start rollers and insert item to be laminated.

3. Collect laminated item at the back of the laminator [run guillotine-like blade to separate item from the rest of the roll]

 

I have never loaded the two rolls of laminating material but I am told it is very easy.

 

When used by our Reprographics staff they have not given a single day of poor service [They have been mis-used by other staff and have needed some TLC afterward]

 

Laminator make/model: GBC Ultima 35 EZLoad

 

http://i.snag.gy/jVyr4.jpg

[dhicks]

Do they not come with a carrier card?

 

Yes, but it often doesn't get used - staff are in a hurry, or forget, or don't know to use it in the first place. The problem is probably a time / space / training / staff availability issue as much as anything, but I figured I'd try and find the easiest-to-use, least-breakable laminating system to start with before starting on alowing only "laminator certified operators" or whatever to use the machines...

[dhicks]

We have two continuous roll laminators used in our Reprographics Department.

 

 

Thanks, good to know, and operation does sound simple.

 

When used by our Reprographics staff they have not given a single day of poor service [They have been mis-used by other staff and have needed some TLC afterward]

 

That might be an issue - laminating here is done by classroom assistants, with the equipment in a corner of our (rather full) staffroom for anyone to fiddle with.

[plexer]

Indeed as the use of the carrier makes it impossible to wrap a pouch around the rollers.

 

Ben

[glennda]

My Last place had a large roll laminator. Instructions stuck on it, as long as the teachers didn't change the temperature it was a case of turning it on let it warm up and then press start and feed.

 

I've found with the pouch type it all depends on the pouchs themselves and isn't normally the laminator which is the problem.

[6Foot2]

...That might be an issue - laminating here is done by classroom assistants, with the equipment in a corner of our (rather full) staffroom for anyone to fiddle with.

 

With that in mind and accepting that any bit of kit can have a malfunction the obvious drawbacks of the laminiators that we use [as I see them] are:

 

1. Poorly mounted media drum(s) causing

mis

-feeds [this should be obvious to the user]

2.

Mis

-feeds caused by poorly aligned item to be lamininated

3. Leaving the motor running so that the laminating media is drawn through the mechanism and wasted.

4. Leaving the heating element on [although I believe it has a safety cut out and so should not get to the point of overheating]

[mdench]

as @glennda has said we use a roll laminator but we with our new photocopiers we have started trialling the new rich "plastic" paper. Which you can print straight onto as if printing normally and is virtually indestructible and many parents / teachers have commented that it looks much nicer up on the walls than some badly laminated piece of paper. Many you could find something similar?

[twin--turbo]

I used to take these things apart on a very regular basis, can't say I have touched one in the last 3 years.

 

Rob

[plexer]

AQL4 A4 Aqualaser printable paper 250 sheets 120gsm

 

£33.80 for 250 sheets, ouch.

 

Ben

[dhicks]

with our new photocopiers we have started trialling the new rich "plastic" paper. Which you can print straight onto as if printing normally and is virtually indestructible and many parents / teachers have commented that it looks much nicer up on the walls than some badly laminated piece of paper. Many you could find something similar?

 

Ooh, that sounds interesting. We've just had all new laser printers and photocopiers installed in September, and we now have Equitrac running to keep track of who prints what. We had a colour laser printer left over, so I've set it up in the staffroom with the idea that people can use it to print colour images on card. I tried some random "glossy laser printer photo paper" I found lying around but that had a tendancy to jam the printer, but printable plastic paper sounds as though it might be just the thing. Is this the Aqualaser stuff that plexer has linked to below, or some kind of Tyvek-based paper, or something else?

[mdench]

Ooh, that sounds interesting. We've just had all new laser printers and photocopiers installed in September, and we now have Equitrac running to keep track of who prints what. We had a colour laser printer left over, so I've set it up in the staffroom with the idea that people can use it to print colour images on card. I tried some random "glossy laser printer photo paper" I found lying around but that had a tendancy to jam the printer, but printable plastic paper sounds as though it might be just the thing. Is this the Aqualaser stuff that plexer has linked to below, or some kind of Tyvek-based paper, or something else?

 

 

It looks similar I'll try to remember to have a chat to the ladies in the office next week as i think we get ours straight from ricoh.

[john]

Ahhh yes the evil beast we have it in bits often enough usually as someone has been rushing and not watching it as its carrierless (yet i don't trust it) and then it jams.

 

My advice, keep doing as you are BUT get one that has a removable top, ours has 2 1/4 turn screws on it that turn with a 1p coin and then are very easy to remove the jam from so yes it jams I'm not denying that but fixing takes about 1 minute compared to a long time with the older ones that were not supposed to come to bits.

[Alis_Klar]

Problem is staff not using them properly. We have the “Expert” brand ones and annoyingly you have to switch the heater to “cool” and wait for it to cool down before you can switch it off. Otherwise you get “flat spots”

 

Also they don’t use the orange Teflon pouches

 

Both these things cause the jams

[dhicks]

Problem is staff not using them properly.

 

Ooh - perfect timing, 6 years on from my original post and we were just discussing this the other day. We went for the GBC Ultima 35 EZload Thermal Roll Laminator in the staffroom, and over the past 6 years we've probably got through half a dozen or so. GBC have repaired them while under warranty, but our staff are just really good at breaking them. They are pretty hard to break, too - you feed the laminate rolls through the first set of rollers and the rest pretty much sorts itself out, there's pretty much nothing else to go wrong. Even with needing to be periodically replaced every year or so, they're still probably better value for money than the previous A3 flat-style laminators we had - those broke more often, and leaving a box of A3 laminate pouches in the staffroom resulted it them being scattered all over the staffroom by the end of the week.

[Alis_Klar]

Yes but aren’t the roll made specifically or that model and therefore more expensive than the Generic A3 pouches.

[dhicks]

Yes but aren’t the roll made specifically or that model and therefore more expensive than the Generic A3 pouches.

 

Yes - also, if you're just doing the one A4 page, you wind up with a fair bit of wasted laminate at each end as you wait for the page to come out from the rollers. However, in our experience we wound up wasting a fair few A3 pouches as they drifted around the staffroom, and A3 laminators seemed to get broken more often than roll laminators - we were maybe getting through one every 3 months.

[mikeprice]

At my last school the laminators were fairly basic - the office staff had stuff BIG notices on them showing the correct temperature - but the main problem was still staff setting the temp. to the highest possible and them complaining that it didn't work

 

or staff switching it on and them immediately feeding stuff in and expecting it to be up to temperature

 

and - naturally - just leaving it and not telling anyone

 

and then complaining that the laminators never worked because .....

 

basically if someone mentioned that they were broken (again) then either me or the office staff could normally fix them in 10 minutes or so - if we had time

 

several teachers and TAs had bought their own from Aldi - and these worked fine - because they owned them and followed the instruction and took care - it was just the school owned ones that they mistreated!

[FishCustard]

At my last school the laminators were fairly basic - the office staff had stuff BIG notices on them showing the correct temperature - but the main problem was still staff setting the temp. to the highest possible and them complaining that it didn't work

 

 

Yep, we get that too. They even managed to blow the internal fuse on it by leaving it at max temp for ages.

[LeMarchand]

A bit redundant as I've just realised how old the first post was, but:

 

Does anyone use continuous-roll hot laminators? So instead of individual pouches we'd have a machine that uses rolls of laminating film. Again, are they pick-up-and-use easy, or do they require training?

 

When used by our Reprographics staff they have not given a single day of poor service [They have been mis-used by other staff and have needed some TLC afterward]

One of my schools has one of these. Was great when they had a member of staff in charge of repro. Now, not so much. Seems to be on throughout the day (and probably beyond) and I have had to turn it off as someone had left it running with laminated-together empty roll spooling out of the back. As I'm only on site 1.5 days/week I'm assuming this wasn't an isolated incident.

 

Do they not come with a carrier card? that way you should never have a pouch melting itself to the roller.

 

They tend to be used by teachers, though. 'Nuff said.

[p858snake]

At my last school the laminators were fairly basic - the office staff had stuff BIG notices on them showing the correct temperature - but the main problem was still staff setting the temp. to the highest possible and them complaining that it didn't work

 

I gave up, duct tape over the dial and only buy 80msg pouches.

[dcwhitworth]

we only allow the laminators to be used by our reprographics staff.