Help With Laminator Purchase

[SignCorp Inc.]

I spent a fair amount of time reading Latex vs Solvent thread and have decided to purchase an HP 365 or HP 560 printer. We are primarily an electrical sign company but we need digital prints from time to time and because of the outgassing of solvent printers we chose the latex printer. We will be purchasing from Grimco and wanted some feedback of which laminator to purchase. Looking for higher quality machine. Hot or cold? What bells and whistles might we need? Feedback please!!!

 

[BigfishDM]

A GFP 563th will partner nice with either one. I would not buy from Grimco also.

 

[OhioSigns]

I've been looking to upgrade my laminator for awhile and am getting ready to purchase a Kala Mistral 1650. I am running an HP360. Check into them..... they seem to be one of the best laminators on the market.

 

[zspace]

We have a Kala Mistral - the operators love it. It runs fast and can run full rolls end to end with under 1/4" of drift. We also have an old Seal Pro 64 - the operators won't touch it anymore.

 

[LED Signs & Designs Texas]

What’s the beef with Grimco, we need to know!!!

 

[Andy D]

What’s the beef with Grimco, we need to know!!!

I have had nothing but great service with Grimco.
They do tend to be higher, but if you show someone else selling a product for less, most times they will match it.

 

[Andy D]

We have a Kala Mistral - the operators love it. It runs fast and can run full rolls end to end with under 1/4" of drift. We also have an old Seal Pro 64 - the operators won't touch it anymore.

Agreed on the Seal, I never liked the one we had.

 

[Andy D]

I've been looking to upgrade my laminator for awhile and am getting ready to purchase a Kala Mistral 1650. I

Slitters! Nice! Do they work well?

 

[Boudica]

I have a Kayla 1650 - Love it, highly recommend it! Slitters?! I don't think our machine has any slitters....

 

[Signed Out]

We have a kala, it's great at laminating. Mounting vinyl to substrates is another story, our 9 year old RS does much better at this. To be fair, I don't think they built it to be good at mounting, but they don't really tell you that. Trays on the kala are small which hinders mounting. The rollers have a much thinner coating than on our RS. We had a batch of ACM in that we were trying to mount prints to with the kala, there was the faintest crease down the middle of the pannels, could only see if held in the right light. Kala left a wrinkle in the vinyl because of this. Tried them on the RS and the thicker coating allowed it to work.

The kala is really good at laminating, full rolls, perfectly. Doing small runs is sort of a pain. The most annoying thing ever is the safety sensors on the kala. Trip a sensor, have to hit a reset button, huge PITA. Heating element in poor location, gets in the way.

Don't get me started on their slitters. I have some other thread about those somewhere with good info. Long story short, they have the original slitters and the new and improved slitters (which are way worse than the originals) We have used both. The originals worked pretty good but you have to modify them because they got the angle of the blade wrong. But not wanting to drill holes into a brand new unit that while we were also waiting on the "new and improved slitters" for left us hanging pretty good. The new and improved version was a total joke, looked and felt like a kids toy.

So for laminating full rolls of vinyl every day, these are great. As an all purpose laminator/mounter we prefer our RS for this role.

 

[Andy D]

We have a kala, it's great at laminating. Mounting vinyl to substrates is another story,

Signed Out, I have the opposite problem, I inherited a crappy Chinese laminator & it laminates horriably... but I have come up with a method to mount vinyl
that works great and might be an option for you too, it's hard to explain:
- I use a "Body Guard" knife to cut backing paper but not the vinyl in the middle of the graphic.
- load the substrate with the vinyl half the way in & set the pressure.
- pull the graphic back over the top laminator roller and remove the paper backing.
- laminate half of the board and turn it around and laminate the other half.
It takes a little longer but works flawlessly with some practice.
I will mount my graphics and then mount the lamination afterwards the same way.

 

[Signed Out]

Signed Out, I have the opposite problem, I inherited a crappy Chinese laminator & it laminates horriably... but I have come up with a method to mount vinyl
that works great and might be an option for you too, it's hard to explain:
- I use a "Body Guard" knife to cut backing paper but not the vinyl in the middle of the graphic.
- load the substrate with the vinyl half the way in & set the pressure.
- pull the graphic back over the top laminator roller and remove the paper backing.
- laminate half of the board and turn it around and laminate the other half.
It takes a little longer but works flawlessly with some practice.
I will mount my graphics and then mount the lamination afterwards the same way.

View attachment 144152

We don't have a problem mounting, mounting just isn't the best suit for the kala laminators.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

We have a kala, it's great at laminating. Mounting vinyl to substrates is another story, our 9 year old RS does much better at this. To be fair, I don't think they built it to be good at mounting, but they don't really tell you that. Trays on the kala are small which hinders mounting. The rollers have a much thinner coating than on our RS. We had a batch of ACM in that we were trying to mount prints to with the kala, there was the faintest crease down the middle of the pannels, could only see if held in the right light. Kala left a wrinkle in the vinyl because of this. Tried them on the RS and the thicker coating allowed it to work.

The kala is really good at laminating, full rolls, perfectly. Doing small runs is sort of a pain. The most annoying thing ever is the safety sensors on the kala. Trip a sensor, have to hit a reset button, huge PITA. Heating element in poor location, gets in the way.

Don't get me started on their slitters. I have some other thread about those somewhere with good info. Long story short, they have the original slitters and the new and improved slitters (which are way worse than the originals) We have used both. The originals worked pretty good but you have to modify them because they got the angle of the blade wrong. But not wanting to drill holes into a brand new unit that while we were also waiting on the "new and improved slitters" for left us hanging pretty good. The new and improved version was a total joke, looked and felt like a kids toy.

So for laminating full rolls of vinyl every day, these are great. As an all purpose laminator/mounter we prefer our RS for this role.

Why not disable the sensors? That's what we did and now we can run it like our GFP.

 

[Signed Out]

Why not disable the sensors? That's what we did and now we can run it like our GFP.

How did you disable them? We asked our supplier about that and he said the laminator won't function if they are disabled.. Figured that was not true but haven't messed around with it.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Looking at the machine, on the right side take the cover off. There is a 2 wire switch, unplug it and create a jumper to bypass. Now you can run with the table up, if you want to bypass the optical one you have to do the same thing with that switch.