Kala Laminator - Review Needed

Going to be purchasing a new laminator in the next couple of weeks. We currently have a Royal Sovereign 55" which has been good to us for the last 8 years but is showing it's age now. We also recently added a 64" printer and cutter, so the laminator is needed. We've checked them all out, would probably stick with a new RS since we know them and haven't had issues with ours, but the Kala Mistral really has our attention.

We saw it at the sign show in Vegas and all the automatic leveling and bells and whistles are great, but what we really like about it is the ability to trim while laminating. If you haven't checked these out yet, there are knifes on the back that you can set to trim excess laminate or edges of a graphic as you laminate it. I know there are some people out there who have made a similar setup on their own laminators too, so really could probably do this with any laminator.

I'm hoping somebody who uses a kala laminator could give a review of how well this function does or doesn't work. Mainly what we'd be looking to do with it is trim off the excess white margins of wrap jobs as you are laminating. Example: you have 48' trailer wraps, little more than a 50 yd roll of printed vinyl. Would you be able to load a full roll of printed vinyl onto the kala and laminate it while trimming the sides off? I would think with a 1 inch overlap that it should work pretty well and save a ton of time handling and trimming panels.

 

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Thanks for your review! Interesting bit about the mounting and the light weight tables. What issue does this cause when mounting? Do the tables bounce around a bit? You are referring to the feed tray on the laminator, correct?

 

I didn't know other lamiantors had optional trimmers too. Do you have a link to any info on what you have? I don't see anything on Seal's website about trimmer options.

 

Thanks everyone for your feedback. We are going forward and purchasing one of these.

Was just informed that if we forego installation and training ($1,000) that the warranty from Kala reduces from 2 years to 6 months. Probably going to just bite the bullet and pay it for the warranty. But what have others done? Just seems pointless. If I can't figure out how to run this laminator with a couple youtube videos and 9 years experience running other laminators, either it's too complicated of a machine or I need to switch careers.. I guess maybe the install might be of more importance because of the "smart" functions, but also pretty sure it gets shipped fully assembled except for maybe placing on the stand and installing the tables.

Opinions?

 

Update: It appears that the warranty only reduces to 6 months for labor, and remains at 2 years for parts if you forego installation and training. So not as big of a deal IMO.

Anybody know if there is anything magical about this machine that would requrie install and training?

 

We got the Kala 1650 mistral in and setup late last week. We haven't yet done any really long runs with it so I can't give a full review yet.

But one thing for sure, the safety features on this thing freaking suck big time. Everytime you trip the laser sensor by the rollers, it dosen't just interrupt power, you have to hit a reset button, same if you lift the table up. Gets real annoying real fast. Perhaps once we get more comfortable with the machine we won't trip it as much, but what a PITA. HAS ANYBODY BYPASSED THIS FEATURE????? Please share if you have. Also having to push a button to activate the foot pedal???? Why???

On to the slitters, at first the slitters didn't seem to work very well. They cut but the material was kind of waving up and down right before it got to the blades, causing a kindof jagged cut. It appeared as if the blades were causing the material to ride up and down like a saw. We played with it a bit and then decided it had to be the angle of the blade because if we held a knife to it at less of an angle it cut nicely. So we unbolted the back bar that the slitters slide on, swung it up and put the screws back in the ends of the bar and let the screws ride on top of the bracket. This gave a better angle and it cut really nicely this way. Wondering if anybody experienced the same thing. Luckily we worked into our deal that when the new style slitters are finally released, a set is getting shipped to us to try out, if we like them better than what we got (original style) we just have to send our old slitter back.

 

Right, but you first have to push a button to be able to use the foot pedal. Only having the machine in operation for a few days, so i'm sure we'll get more used to it. But really seems to be a pain for loading and mounting to substrates. And really has anyone ever been hurt using a laminator? Just seems way to overboard.