Seal 54 EL issues

[CanuckSigns]

We have a 2 year old Seal 54EL laminator that has a problem with vinyl drifting when laminating. I called seal tech support and they are not much help, I was told to adjust the 2 bolts that provide tension on the spring, but the problem is still there.

The problem is the vinyl will skew to the right a good 3/4" on a 10' run. after about 20-30 feet the laminate will start to wrinkle and ruin the print. I've double and triple checked that my leading edge is straight and square and that it is being loaded in correctly. The laminate itself is tracking perfectly fine, it's the vinyl that moves.

Had a tech in today to replace a part on our printer, had him take a look at the laminator, he doesn`t deal with Seal stuff so he couldn`t give me a definite answer but he did a "pull test" to check the tension across the roller and he noticed the left and right side of the roller were exactly the same which is good, but the centre of the roller had MUCH lower tension (the edges were giving him a reading of 9, centre was 3)

Does anyone have any suggestions on things I can look at before I waste another hour on hold with seal?

 

[LarryB]

Good luck with the Seal 54EL. I had it for a month and sent it back with the same issues. A tech guy came out to try to "fix" it but no luck. I could never get a long run of laminate without any issues. I think the main problem is there is no tension bar with it. I ended up getting a Royal Sovereign 1401 and love it. I can laminate a full roll without any skewing.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Yeah we don't do a ton of laminating, so I didn't have a need for a high end machine, but I figured I would be better off with a entry level seal machine vs. a higher end no-name machine, turns out that is not the case. The machine has never really tracked well since day 1, but we always wrote it off as operator error since it never really ruined anything, now that i'm running full rolls through it, the flaws are really starting to show!

When I called Seal a year ago to get it addressed, I was told the machine has a 6 month warranty and they emailed me the service manual. I told them if I wanted to buy a machine that didn't track well and had no warantee, I would have saved myself $5,000 and got a chinese unit off ebay.

 

[VISCOM]

Keep your rollers clean... I have a Seal 54 Base and I take a foamcore sheet and coat it with mounting adhesive and run it in the machine till the rollers are clean helps alot