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Selecting The Right Laminator

It's wise to be discriminating when
buying equipment for laminating

Laminator buyers often assume that any machine big enough will do the job. As a result, some buy big laminators on price alone and soon find that their purchase would not have been a good deal at any price. For example, some find that their "bargain" laminator will laminate some jobs, but will not do any mounting. Others buy a cold laminator only, and find themselves unable to do cost-effective encapsulation and one-pass laminating and mounting. Some buy a lower priced, hot, single-sided laminator; and realize too late they would have preferred to encapsulate many of their images. None of these mistakes is the fault of the machine. The fault is in not knowing what needs to be done, or in rationalizing a price-based buying decision with wishful thinking instead of facts.

Tim Propst of Baseline Digital Imaging in North Garland Hills, Texas, knows firsthand what can happen when you don't know what to look for in a laminator. He paid over $7,000 for a laminator. The machine now sits unused under a tarp in his garage.

"I thought I could throw some film on any big laminator and get the job done," explains Propst. "I didn't shop around. A month after I got that laminator, I wished it could do a lot of things that it couldn't do." He says the machine's shortcomings included insufficient heating, a weak cooling system, wrong-size supply roll mandrels and a speed control that didn't work as needed. Consequently, the machine was inadequate as a laminator and couldn't do any mounting.

The company that sold him the machine knew very little about digital imaging, notes Propst. When he realized his new laminator wasn't up to par, he began taking some of his finishing to a trade laminator.

"When you send your finishing outside, you take a chance of losing your customer, " says Propst. So he went back to square one, shopped around, and recently bought a hot-shoe laminator/mounter. The transition to the new laminator has not been painless, but the dealer for the new machine provided hands-on training and an instructional videotape. Both the dealer and the manufacturer were accessible by phone. Ironically, the right machine for the job cost no more than the wrong one. The new machine is used to finish nearly all of Baseline's images and Propst is happy. He adds, "Now we're getting business doing lamination for others."

How to Choose
a Laminator Table

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Once you have an idea of what you want from your imaging system and laminator, find the vendors who can provide not only the right machine, but also the most valuable commodity of all -- information about how to use it. No matter how much you know, you can never know enough in a developing market where the technology and trends can change quickly.

Find a vendor who can show you more than just the workings of the machine itself. You need to understand the principles behind the lamination process. You need to know the optimum media/ink/film "recipes" for all the jobs the machine will do so you can select the right materials for each job. For example, if you're having trouble laminating a certain combination of media, ink and film, you can generally substitute a media and ink combination that will provide an equally acceptable image quality and also laminate well.

Make a list of the jobs you'll want the laminator to do, and you'll be able to screen potential vendors more effectively because you'll know what to ask them. Many newcomers to the digital-imaging field buy a laminator without a clue of what it will need to do, so its' not surprising that they often end up with the wrong machine for their jobs.

Let's say you've made a list of tasks for your laminator and you've found some vendors with some expertise. Your next step should be to verify what your prospective vendors tell you about their machines. Ideally, you'll find a way to see that each of these machines performs as advertised, either live or on tape.

Another way of verifying product information is to talk to people who are already using the machine. Don't sell references short, even if they are supplied by the vendor. It's very important for you to talk to these references. They will often give you a more honest appraisal than you or the vendor might expect. Don't limit yourself to asking general questions such as, "How do you like the laminator?" Use your list of desired tasks to ask specific questions: "How well does it run 5-mil film? Do you do any mounting and laminating in one pass? What mounting adhesives do you use?"

Propst agrees: "Talk to somebody who has a laminator and is using it for imaging work." He adds that ease of use and vendor support are also very important issues to ask about. "Don't balk at paying more to buy from a vendor with training and expertise," advises Propst, because ignorance can be a lot more expensive than education.