laminator alignment

[chartle]

I have a new Royal Sovereign RCH-1401 H.

Two days ago we got installed it and put a small roll of oracal 210 lam on it and laminated a few things. There was only maybe 10 feet of lam left on the roll so I couldn't really test it out but wow big improvement over the Big Squeegee.

So I mounted a full roll of 290 and started to go to town. The problem is now I am having huge alignment issues.

I think I line it up right using the guides on the infeed table but after a 6 foot job I'm off maybe a half an inch.

I have tried everything including lasers and its not getting better. The best I could do was maybe .25 of an inch over 6 feet and it was pure guess work.

Is there a trick I am missing?

 

[Sticky Signs]

Are you running down the centre of the laminator? Always center everything. I don't think those guides do much good. Make sure your roll of lam is tightly wound and straight on the core. Same goes for the printed vinyl. I always find that either the lam or the printed vinyl will "drift" over any long lenths. Half an inch over 6' feet sounds excessive to me. Try the steps above. If that doesn't work, the laminator may need to be calibrated. Call the tech or place you bought it from.

 

[Tony McD]

+1
...and make sure the roller pressure is the same on each end.

 

[WB]

here's a trick to try.. get some transfer paper, tracing paper carbon paper. whatever you want to call it. You should beable to get it at a local art supply store. Next get some kraft paper or even regular 8 1/2"x11" white paper. lay the paper down across the length of the bottom roller then lay the transfer paper on top. Once that's done put the rollers down to full pressure like you where going to laminate something, lift them up and check the line that's been left ont he paper. I depending on the design of your lamiantor you want a thicker line in the middle that tapors off towards the edges. BUT you want the same thickness at each edge. If you have a different thickness at each edge that means that your laminator is putting more pressure one edge then the other which COULD cause a skew in your laminating.

That being said..In my expierence if your not getting ripples or bubbles on 1 side of your output then the pressure is probably fine. You migth just need some more time with the machine, I normally use visual reference rather then the guides. are you using a backer? (bottom roll)

another trick is to roll whatever your laminating or a small tube and trim the front edge so that it's perfectly square to side of the media, this will give you a better guide when feeding the media in and you'll know rigth away if you started it slightly crooked.

long post. sorry , hope it helped.

Bill

 

[astro8]

Having used a few different laminators over the years, here's my advice for what it's worth...

Foremost reason I've found for lamininate/print not running straight (considering everything else is mounted correctly on the laminator : printed roll wound correctly, nice & straight, laminate roll nice & straight, correct tension on backing paper take-up, print roll spindle, laminate spindle etc ) is the backing paper take up. If you tape the backing paper directly to the reel it will run true, but is a major headache to remove the paper once it's 'full up'.

Common practice is to slide an empty core over the spindle and tape to that but this is where the problem begins as the empty core rarely fit precisely and you get a 'wobble.

Slide some rubber bands over the spindle so the empty core fits precisely and runs true...slide a couple of 'packers' (toothpicks, matchsticks, pieces of 2mm acrylic, whatever betwwen the core and the spindle) to make it run true...it only takes a miniscule amount of wobble to make a major run out over a few feet.

Make sure your feed tray is 'clicked in' properly ( I've been guilty of this on more than one occasion) and perfectly square to the rollers, check it and a good amount of tension applied to everything....just a little stiff to turn by hand....not to much or you'll stretch your print and then get bad curling when you go to trim or worse when you try to align tiled prints. Good news is that once everything is setup right it seems to stay that way unless someone who knows better than you 'adjusts' things.

After taking these precautions we have no problems laminating full rolls of print.

 

[chartle]

thanks for all the tips.

First I didn't center the lam on the machine at all I didn't even really try so thats my first step.

Also I have to figure out if I'm even placing the graphic square to the table and rollers.

One other question.

I taped the backer to the take up roll that came with the machine and have gone through maybe a 1/3 of the roll. Is there an easy way to take off the excess backer? My best way is to cut through it and remove it strips.

 

[pixel_pusher]

When the top roll fills up, just use an empty media core to replace it, and put the full take up core on the bottom under the feed table to set up new lam. jobs.

The reason for drifting, since your machine doesn't have tension controls on both sides, is the cut side you're feeding into the machine isn't perfectly straight (1 or 2 degrees can cause more drift than you think) and you're not feeding the lam and the printed graphic dead center in the laminator's rollers. Do those two things, and it'll be smooth sailing.