Need Help laminating..

[eahicks]

so. does anyone have any tips on laminating smaller widths than the roll? i have a 54 inch laminator but i want to run 30 inch material and 48 inch material through it.

Just cut your piece of laminate to fit whatever you are laminating....or maybe I'm misunderstanding the question?

 

[Geneva Olson]

Center it up and use a good tape measure to get the rolls straight..the media and the lamination. As long as your laminator feeds straight, you should be fine.

I ended up doing this. I taped some backing on the laminator so that when the project came through it didn't grab on the laminator. This worked the best. I had tried to feed it through on backing paper and that turned into a mess. so I just fed it straight through.

 

[Geneva Olson]

Sorry! I missed this question last week...

A "sled" is a piece of board with mounting adhesive applied to one side that has the release paper left on - this make a surface that the laminate won't stick to. You put the piece of vinyl down on the sled, then take a piece of laminate cut a bit larger than your printed piece and start it was printed adhesive vinyl you were going to mount.

Here's a real quick example:
View attachment 150381

Also, found this video...it's a small manual laminator, but it's all the same idea. Looks like someone else posted the same video! I'll leave it here anyway. Hope this helps!

I've done this before when mounting vinyl onto foamboard. But this was a different issue.
Thanks for the help.

 

[Pewter0000]

Just cut your piece of laminate to fit whatever you are laminating....or maybe I'm misunderstanding the question?

We've done jobs like this too. It's not super efficient for a TON of jobs, but if it's a one or two off its handy-dandy. We just cut the laminate the size we want and apply just like applying vinyl through the laminator. It helps to leave a leading edge on the media being laminated so it can be set into the rollers first.

 

[Boudica]

so. does anyone have any tips on laminating smaller widths than the roll? i have a 54 inch laminator but i want to run 30 inch material and 48 inch material through it.

I know you already figured this out... but this just came up again for me and I remember now.... It takes two of us, and one person pulls out the laminated media while the other swiffers as it goes in. If I don't have help, I just set the laminator speed really really slow and run back and forth - pulling and swiffering.

 

[Geneva Olson]

I know you already figured this out... but this just came up again for me and I remember now.... It takes two of us, and one person pulls out the laminated media while the other swiffers as it goes in. If I don't have help, I just set the laminator speed really really slow and run back and forth - pulling and swiffering.

That's pretty much what I have been doing. I have been printing a lot of reflective and it's 48 inches wide. When I laminate it, I just put it through. This seems to be the best way to do it!
Thanks for the reinforcement. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any tips or tricks.