Hot or Cold Laminator

[Indecisive]

Would you recommend a hot or cold laminator for vinyl bumper stickers and decals intended vehicle windshields?

 

[White Haus]

Cold or Heat Assist is fine. Heat assist can help with silvering issues or when laminated UV printed stuff.

We have a hot (GBC) laminator and messed around with hotmelt/thermal laminates a bit but it wasn't worth the hassle for us.

Unless you plan on encapsulating (adding hot laminate to top and bottom of prints/posters etc) then hot is a waste a money, in my humble opinion.

 

[Boudica]

The Kayla Mistral is a great laminator - especially if you do long runs, it has heat assist. I second what White Haus said about silvering with matte laminate. I would NOT recommend heat if you work with cast vinyl a lot. I don't use the heat when I laminate cast - just calendared.

 

[signheremd]

We use a cold Laminator and no regrets. We had a hot previously, worked great once you honed in the correct settings but also wasted more material with each run. Silvering usually disappears in a day or so, a few hours in the sun does wonder for it to. We've only ever had one customer concerned with silvering - for a day. Our cold laminator is actually a CutWorkTable - great for applying large graphics perfectly.

 

[myront]

We have a "workhorse" of a laminator (25yr old SEAL). Cold/hot press. We only use heat for encapsulating but have since got away from that. Everything we do now is cold press with no problems. Vehicle wraps, window perf, intermediate vinyl for decals and/or magnetics. Matte, luster or glossy.

 

[brdesign]

Heat is nice to have when using some of the thicker laminates like 5 or 10 mill frosted polycarb, or floor laminates, but it's not critical to have it. The heat helps to reduce the silvering, but going really slow with a cold laminator also helps.