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New Laminator - Need Advice

MDCC

New Member
Hello everyone!

This is my first post to the forum, but I’ve been gathering so much information on here for well over a year now. So first off, thank you all who have offered advice to those in need of help, including me in the shadows.

I now find myself in a position to ask a question that isn’t easily answerable via forum lurking. I’m looking at purchasing my first wide format lamination machine, which I could use some advice on as sometimes sales reps are really only pushing what they sell. Firsthand experience is always best. But first, a little history about my business so an answer can be better formulated.

My company started out in small format digital printing – essentially a step up from a copy shop with a number of retail and wholesale clients. We always did wide format printing and finishing, but only with aqueous inks for indoor use only. 13 years later and we’ve grown our offerings in wide format while continuing to build both small format print and wide format solutions. I’ve been running an HP Latex 360 for almost 3 years now – love it for producing banners and posters. Last summer we acquired an EFI H1625 LED so we can print directly to rigid substrates – that’s been an experience. We will be receiving a Colex Sharpcut flatbed with conveyor in June. Stepping into the rigid substrate printing side of the world has many finishing problems, I mean “opportunities” for us as it’s usually about getting another machine instead of man power. We have smaller 27” Banner American hot laminators (don’t laugh) which have work for us up until now. However, the need for an actual wide format laminator is real, so here I am.

We print on ACM, coroplast, falcon board, acrylic, HIPS, Sintra, occasionally glass, thick and thin paper stocks, various adhesive vinyls, and a number of banner materials. The application for these are both indoor and outdoor signage, decals, floor-window-wall graphics, double and single sided lamination, with and without encapsulation, and strange things in between – no car wraps in the foreseeable future, but business does change course over time. I’d like to do full roll lamination and rigid sheet lamination so I can send it through finishing on the Colex that is coming. Since I’m printing with both latex and LED UV ink, I need a solution that covers this whole gambit for lamination. The various sales reps have shown machines from Seal, Royal Sovereign, and GFP. The concept of cold roll lamination is new to me, so I’m not sure what questions to even ask, except that I want a heat assist one. I know that as my business grows that I don’t want to regret buying something in a year because it didn’t fit our business’s future needs – been down that route a couple times when the “bigger” model was really what I needed. Or it could be that I’m seriously over thinking all of this as it’s just a laminator and buying something that is reasonably functional is ok. My budget is somewhere between 6-10k, unless I find an actual serious reason to spend more. My thoughts have been centered on the Royal Sovereign RSC-1651LSH with heat assist. It seems to be a middle road laminator with a cost effective price tag. Does anyone have any experience with this machine or can offer advice on other machines that would fit my situation? Another option is the RSH-1651 also from Royal Sovereign that is both hot and cold, which could help with the hot lamination I do with paper production, and also because I can no longer get parts for my Banner American laminators. Or should I leave hot lamination to the smaller format laminators? Any insight would be greatly appreciated, and I do apologize for the lengthy post.
 

Christian @ 2CT Media

Active Member
If your budget is up to 10K I'd say the best machine is the GFP 563TH. If you can bump your budget to 12k I would seriously take a hard look at the kala mistral... with the auto leveling and pressure balancing roller, plus easy loading makes it a great choice for a busy shop.
 

AF

New Member
Up your budget and call AGL. Even their most entry level pressure sensitive machines are pneumatic, built like tanks, and worth every penny. Their encapsulation machines are the best out there. PSA films are a very different animal than thermal films so getting a well built and easy to use machine like an AGL will pay for itself just in material that isn’t wasted. AGL can build a machine for your with dual-durometer rollers for handling your UV prints too. We run our AGL on an inexpensive JC10 dedicated compressor with traps/driers, and it is very quiet and extremely portable.

I think it is a mistake to try to use one laminator for thermal encapsulation and also for cold laminating. If you don’t need wide format encapsulation then keeping a smaller thermal laminator like a Ledco or American Banner makes sense. The reason for this is because pressure sensitive laminating films are much more expensive than thermal films so you you don’t want to contaminate your rollers with thermal adhesive and then wreck your cold laminating jobs with tracks of air bubbles from thermal adhesive buildup. One ruined PSA job could be over a grand in films plus print time and wasted labor.
 

signman315

Signmaker
If your budget is up to 10K I'd say the best machine is the GFP 563TH. If you can bump your budget to 12k I would seriously take a hard look at the kala mistral... with the auto leveling and pressure balancing roller, plus easy loading makes it a great choice for a busy shop.
2CT Media has nailed it on the head! I've been in the sign industry over 10 years, running various laminators through the years. The GFP line is the best for the money IMO...I just went to ISA in Orlando this year and saw the Kala, AGL, GFP, Royal Sovereign, among others. The GFP has all the necessary features, is a solid/reliable machine and is tested in the market...a great machine for the price. The Kala and AGL and undoubtedly superior laminators but are also more expensive, but they are only superior in terms of ease of use and other bells/whistles...at the end of the day the quality of lamination among any of the mentioned machines is equal, and they are all pretty fast. When you look at a laminated product you aren't going to be able to tell if it was laminated on a Kala, GFP, AGL, or whatever else. The Kala has auto leveling but this means it also has more parts to repair/replace, the AGL doesn't have crowned rollers and is built like a tank but none of that is reflected in the finished product. Seal laminators are great but their service/support isn't. Royal Sovereigns are decent but wildly over priced, the Kala is equal/better for significantly less. So I'd recommend the GFP as it's the most reliable with the necessary features (heat assist, etc) and has a solid record with a reasonable price. But what it really comes down to is what features work for you and your shop. I also like the GFP because the media bars swing out from the machine, allowing loading/unloading without a table nearby. But perhaps there's not enough room in your space to do that....The Kalas are my favorite but they don't offer any game-changing feature that justifies the higher cost over a GFP...but again whatever works for your flow, they are all going to apply laminate with about the same quality/speed in my humble opinion :)
 

jfiscus

Rap Master
I will also put my voice in on recommending a GFP 563th to you. We have two of them now, kicking butt every day.
 

FatCat

New Member
Purchased our GFP 563TH end of last year which replaced a US Tech laminator that ran strong for 5-6 years and is still making money with its new owner. The US Tech is a true entry level laminator that will do fine for most small shops not running rolls of laminate all day. That said, the 563TH has been a good step up for us, lots of nice features, very well built, though I 'm not the biggest fan of their take-up unit, most of the time it does OK. Like others have said, its the best in its price/class.
 

signmanbob

New Member
I got on Ebay and bought a Seal 62ProS for $7000. It has worked perfectly for about 5 years now. I love it.
 
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