failing laminator

[ucmj22]

I have always battled with our laminator since day 1. I never thought it worked right, but none of us had anything to compare it to. I use it alot for mounting prints to panels up to 4X8 in addition to laminating. Recently it has been sucking at that even. It seems to be going slower, and its not applying even pressure across the board. I will start to mount a 4X8, and the first 2-3' on one side will have serious bubbles in it as if it were only applying light pressure, and by the time it gets to the end of the board, it has skewed the whole board by a couple of degrees.

Do people have these things serviced, or just by a new one? Our model is a Royal Sovereign 54" cold laminator RSC-1400C.

Any input would be appreciated

 

[iprint]

I don't recall exactly what to do, but if you take the end caps off of the side that is giving you less pressure you will see that something has worked itself loose. Again it has been years since this happened, so I apologize for the vague description. Once you get the cover off it should be fairly evident what is going wrong. I think it may be a chain similar to a bike chain that raises and lowers the top roller on the left side came loose on ours?!?!
While you are in there make sure everything is lubricated! Oh and unplug it before taking the cap off! :Big Laugh

 

[ucmj22]

Thanks, Ill see what I can accomplish.

 

[SIGNTIME]

we have the same laminator and love it only maintenance we do is spray white lithium grease on the chains twice a year... we had a problem with skewing and found that we need to keep the board centered and squared between the rollers because the rollers are crowned... i took a sharpie and marked every two inches to make centering easier

 

[MikeH]

Sounds like the pressure on the rolls are off from one side to the other. The board will track to the side with less pressure.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

That's actually a really good laminator, it sounds like something is just out of adjustment as others have said. A laminator is one of those things that doesn't really "go bad" so to speak, if you maintain it and keep it adjusted it'll last a very long time.

Take the end caps off and check to make sure the adjustment screws aren't out of whack, and inspect the mechanicals as you run it with and without boards in it to see if you can see anything binding up or not engaging fully.

We had one for several years and every so often had to open it up and make an adjustment here and there, things just work loose over time. We replaced it with a new Seal unit and I really regret that, I could have bought 2 more of the RS units for the cost of one Seal.

 

[LenR]

I've got a AGL Encore Maxim I'm selling for 12K (OBO) plus shipping if you're interested.

 

[Salmoneye]

I will tell you a little trick we used with offset printing rollers, bindery rollers etc.. If your unit has pressure adjustments it can be really hard to determine if one side is tighter than the other... without an instrument to check actual pressure. We used to take a this strip of negative film or ??? maybe 1/2" wide x 6" or more long and place it between the rollers. If you slowly pull the strip out towards you, you can feel how much friction or resistance there is on the film. Do this on both sides until they at least feel equal, then you can count the turns of adjustment you make on both sides if you continue to adjust and they should both at least be close to the same. There might be a much better way of doing this that I don't know about but it will at least get you close. It's hard to adjust pressure without having some way to guage it.

 

[AutoGraphx]

You may be able to make use of a product used to check bearing crush on engines. It's called "Plastigage" you can get it at your auto parts store for a couple of dollars. It's a very thin strip of putty. When you put it under the bearing cap and torque it down it is squashed out a little thicker. You pull the cap back off and compare it to the paper gauge that is printed on the Plastigage wrapper. If you place a small piece under each end of your roller and adjust them until you get the same result at each end. I've never tried it but it sounds like it would work for your application.

 

[SlightlyChilled]

you can flip the rolls little work but might help