Laminating sheets that have been
printed on a digital press results in significant benefits, ranging
from enhanced image quality to greater durability, and an increasing
number of printers are looking either to bring this facility in-house
or find a trade house that offers the service. However, laminating this
sort of printed material is much more difficult than handling that
produced on a sheet-fed litho press.
Stock that has been subjected to the heat of a digital press can be low
in moisture and high in static, making sheets difficult to separate and
feed into another machine. In addition, some toners, particularly
oil-based toners, are extremely effective at repelling anything you
might try to stick to the sheet. If there is not a substantial amount
of pressure in the laminator’s nip rollers, the film
doesn’t stick and the end result is likely to be mottled and grey
– quite the opposite to the desired effect.
Derbyshire manufacturer Autobond believes it has come up with the ideal
solutions following the launch in July of the MINI Digital laminator,
which is aimed specifically at digital printers. The company has used
its 27 years of experience in designing and manufacturing robust film
laminators for the commercial sheet-fed market to create a machine
suitable for digital print, as managing director John Gilmore explains.
“We were increasingly being asked by companies operating digital
presses for a model that would handle the print they were typically
producing, and many of these firms have subsequently bought one of our
traditional commercial machines. However we wanted to design a
laminator that was specifically aimed at the needs of the digital
printer, operating in a more office based environment than our
sheet-fed litho customers.”
The answer has come in the form of the new MINI digital and the first
model has already been installed by CLE Printing in St Ives,
Cambridgeshire. This 40-strong family run business provides a full
spectrum of services, from design through to finishing, with printing
carried out on Nexpress DigiMaster, HP Indigo and Heidelberg DI
equipment.
“A significant amount of the work we produce needs to be
laminated and all of this was being sent out to the trade,” says
CLE managing director Jamie Wardley. “Bringing this process
in-house has made financial sense for the last two years, but it
wasn’t until we heard about the new MINI Digital that we found a
model that sounded as if it would meet our requirements.
“We took a wide range of digitally printed material up to
Autobond’s Heanor factory and the demonstration went so well that
we ordered the first MINI Digital to be built. This has been at our
site for only a few days. However, he first job, consisting of 5,000
book covers, went through at a productive and efficient speed.”
CLE Print produces work ranging from business cards to personalised
mailers and specialises in providing a complete service to industrial
sectors, where customers benefits from dealing with one supplier for
all their requirements from design and print to fulfillment and
mailing. Much of the latter needs to be laminated and the company says
it is seeing a trend for customers to ask for lamination because of the
advantages of durability and enhanced quality.
“We particularly like the well built construction of the new
Autobond laminator and we anticipate that it will pay for itself within
two years, as well as providing us with greater quality control and our
customers with a faster turnaround. The MINI Digital’s quick make
ready means it is suitable for very short runs, although by batching
our work we benefit from more efficient production.”
The new MINI Digital will laminate stock from A4 to 36 x 57cm, at
speeds up to 30 metres per minute. This equates to 4,500 SRA3 sheets an
hour, which is sufficient to handle the output from several digital
printers. The laminator has a footprint of only 2.2 x 1.1 metres and
has the same high quality construction as the other Autobond models,
including the incorporation of 30 mm thick steel side panels. This
enables the 240 mm diameter and 10 mm diameter laminating rollers to
create a nip pressure of up to nine tonnes, which overcomes any
potential difficulty of adhesion that may arise when the stock has been
printed with an oil or toner based ink.
The MINI Digital handles matt or gloss polypropylene and acetate
thermal film ranging from 115 to 450 gsm, while the perfecting option
allows sheets to be laminated both sides in one pass. Other features
include Siemens PLC and inverter drives, a digital sheet counter,
adjustable anti curl bar, pneumatically adjustable in feed nip rollers
and a pneumatic air clutch to provide a constant tension between the
laminator and the sheeter. Siemens products provide remote machine
diagnostics via a modem link to Autobond technicians. The high level of
automation means that the operator does not have to be skilled.
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