Lamination is a finishing process developed in the print industry. It involves the addition of a material - known as a laminate - to the surface of paper or card. Lamination is now commonly used to:

• Strengthen a document
• Improve longevity of a frequently handled document
• Aesthetically enhance the finish of a document

Laminates are very thin pieces of material, usually transparent or at least partly transparent. In commercial printing, there are various ways to adhere a laminate onto paper or card, including heat, pressure, or use of an adhesive. If you look around your home or office, you will find dozens of items that have been professionally laminated. Everything from book covers to greeting cards to presentation boxes. We don’t often take notice of it, but it’s an incredibly common process!

The type of lamination performed with a laminating machine at home or at work is based on the same principles as professional print laminating. It’s just been simplified a bit. Lamination machines stick to one type of laminate (glossy plastic) and use heat and pressure (or sometimes just pressure) to stick the laminate on both sides of sheets of paper and card.

For convenience most office and domestic lamination needs are best met with lamination pouches. Lamination pouches are commonly available with gloss and matt finishes.

If you want to understand the nuts and bolts of how to laminate paper, it’s helpful to have a general understanding of how a laminating machine works. There are different types of laminator that work in slightly different ways. But all laminating machines use the same three basic components:

• Lamination pouches that act as the laminate
• Heat and/or pressure to seal the laminate around the document
• A roller mechanism to feed the document and laminate sheets through the laminating machine

The document you want to laminate is covered with the plastic sheet on one or both sides. It is then fed into the roller mechanism of the machine. As the sheets roll through, pressure and, in hot lamination machines, heat is applied. This bonds the laminate around the paper, either by melting it just enough to stick, or by activating adhesives in the laminate.

Depending on the type of machine, you can sometimes adjust the speed of the feed, the heat and the amount of pressure applied to achieve different results. For example, you will need to use a slower feed speed setting and hotter temperature setting to laminate thicker card or thicker laminates (thicker laminates provide more rigidity and increased longevity).

Fortunately, Leitz Laminators simplify the whole process, auto-sensing models automatically adopt appropriate heat and speed settings required to deliver professional results.

What can I laminate?

There is a long list of possible uses for a laminating machine.

Aside from paper documents and cards, other materials you might want to laminate include:

• Photographs
• Carbon copies
• Vinyl prints
• Screen prints

Laminators provide a simple yet effective means of protecting, preserving and enhancing documents.

Lamination adds a tough, long lasting plastic coating that prevents the everyday wear and tear that soon makes paper documents unusable. It stops them getting torn or crumpled, it protects them from spills and stains. That’s an absolute must if you want to keep reusing printed paper products in busy environments like offices, schools, hospitals, shops, restaurants and more.

At the same time, laminating gives documents a professional-looking finish. It’s generally considered to be more professional to display a glossy laminated sign in their office, classroom or waiting room than pin a plain piece of paper to the wall that soon look tired and tatty.

One final handy benefit is that you can write on a laminated document and then easily wipe it clean again. This proves useful in lots of different environments, from annotating plans and proposals in meetings to reusing teaching materials in classrooms.

Here’s a summary of the main advantages of a laminating machine:

Strength and durability

Paper is a weak material, and yet we rely on it for so many things. Laminating adds strength and durability, keeping documents safe from wear and tear.

Water protection

One sure fire way to ruin paper documents is getting them wet. The sealed plastic layer laminating adds keeps paper safe from spilled drinks, rain, being dropped into sinks, etc.

Long lasting protection

Lamination doesn’t just protect documents for a few days or weeks. The tough plastic casing it adds will last for years, preserving the printed material for as long as you need.

Extended use

Long lasting protection means you can keep using laminated materials over and over, safe in the knowledge that they won’t tear, crumple or smudge.

Professional appearance

Carefully preserved documents reflect well on your business. But aside from that, lamination also gives paper products a unique gloss that looks attractive and professional.

There are two basic types of lamination machine:

Pouch laminators

This is the standard type of laminating machine you will find in most homes and offices. Pouch laminators are designed to be compact, easy to use and flexible for most standard laminating jobs. Unless you want to laminate in high volumes or have special laminating requirements, a pouch laminator will likely suit your needs.

Roll or Film laminators

These types of laminating machine tend to be found in commercial premises like photography studios or small printing shops. They are better suited to high volume laminating than pouch laminators and also make it easier to laminate products of lots of different sizes and shapes.

With a roll laminator, you place the products you are laminating onto a bottom layer of film and feed both into the machine. Rollers apply another layer of laminate film along with heat and pressure to seal the two layers together.

Pouch laminators get their name because they work using special premade pouches. Pouch laminators are convenient. They are sealed at one end and all you have to do is slip your document or item inside the plastic pouch, feed it through the laminator, and the heat and pressure turns the pouch into a sealed, durable casing.

Pouch laminators and the pouches themselves come in different sizes. The standard pouch laminator is designed to take documents up to A3 in size. More compact versions are built for A4 documents.

Leitz pouches are available in A3 to A7 as well as bespoke sizes suitable for business or membership cards, luggage tags and more. A4 and A3 laminating pouches are the most common.

Choosing the right size laminator is not purely a case of thinking about the size of the documents you want to laminate. A3 laminators are very useful even if you have no intention of ever laminating A3 size sheets.

Because you can fit two A4 sheets at a time in an A3 pouch (or four A5 sheets), A3 laminators speed things up when you have several items at a time to laminate.

On the flipside, A4 laminators are smaller and more compact. If you don’t have large amounts to laminate, they might suit a home or small office better.

One of the big attractions of pouch laminators is how easy they are to use. There’s no big learning curve mastering the art of how to laminate. It’s just a case of switching the machine on and following four easy steps:

1. Select the pouch setting. Some smaller and more basic laminators only have one temperature setting, but if the laminator is heat adjustable, you will need to select the appropropriate temperature for the pouches that you are using. For more sensitive documents like photographs, you might want to use a cooler setting. For thicker laminating pouches (see below), you will need slightly higher temperatures. Some advanced laminators feature sensors to automatically adjust to the appropriate temperature as the pouches passes through the laminator to help minimise the risk of mistakes.
2. Wait for the laminator to heat up. You can’t use a laminator the moment you switch it on. You have to wait until it reaches its operation temperature, otherwise the laminate pouch will not seal properly, and you will get poor results. Most laminators will typically take several minutes to reach its operational temperature. A green indicator light tells you when it is ready. Generally speaking, more advanced laminators also offer the fastest warm up times.
3. Prepare your laminates. With a pouch laminator, this is very easy. All you have to do is place the documents you want to laminate in a pouch.
4. Feed your item through the machine. It’s a good idea to support your pouches as they go through for the first half at least to help avoid them slipping.  Some laminators feature a feeder system to help ensure best possible finishes.

Warm up time

The faster the warm up time the less waiting you need to do.  Although slower warm up times provide time to prepare and load your lamination pouches. One minute warm-up times are typically reserved for machines in higher usage environments to reduce wait times.

Throughput speed

This is the speed at which the laminator laminates.  This is normally specified in milimetres per minute (mm/min).  Be sure to compare like for like.  At Leitz we also share the time it takes to laminate a single A4 sheet using a standard 80micron pouch as this is often more meaningful.  Remember, the thicker the pouch the longer the lamination process takes.

The number of rollers

Laminating pouch machines deploy rollers, heat and add pressure to the pouch as it passes between the rollers.  The more rollers the machine has the better and more even the lamination finish.  Not all rollers are heated so if we need a professional finish be sure to check how many rollers are actually heated.  For context, some of Leitz’s best specified laminators feature 6 rollers, the pouch is fed between 3 rollers above the pouch and three rollers below, 4 of which are heated.

Micron settings

This dictates the maximum thickness of the lamination pouches that you can safely use with the laminating machine.  250microns is typically the highest setting for high end machines.  80microns is suitable for most everyday lamination needs.

Guarantee

2-year warranties are commonplace. Leitz Touch range laminators offer 3-year extended warranty for additional peace of mind.

A crucial part of using a pouch laminator is choosing the pouch. Lamination pouches come in different thicknesses. The thicker the pouch, the more rigid and durable the finished product will be.

You will see laminate pouches labelled with a number followed by ‘mic’, which is short for microns. 1 micron = 1000th of a millimetre. You will typically see pouch thicknesses between 80 to 250 mic. The micron measurement communicated refers to the thickness of one side of the pouch.  You will often will see labels like 2 x 80 mic, 2 x 150 mic etc; this is simply refering to the front and back lamination thickness.

Choosing a thicker pouch makes sense when you have items that you know are going to be handled and used frequently as thicker pouches offer increased durability.

Whether you work from home or want a laminator for personal use, there are dozens of things you can use a laminating machine for at home. Some examples include:

• Covers for reports
• Presentation materials
• Newspaper clippings
• Labels
• Business cards
• Reference materials
• Schedules and task charts
• Calendars
• Craft projects
• Children’s drawings
• Photographs
• Certificates

There are literally dozens of potential uses for a laminator in an office, and different uses depending on what the nature of the business is.

One of the most common across all sectors is signage. Businesses need and use signs for all sorts of purposes, from mandatory health and safety notices to sales and marketing materials to customer information, signage is both necessary and expensive, if you pay for it to be done professionally.

Alternatively, you can print what you need out yourself (or have that done professionally, for much less the cost of proper signage). And then laminate it to make it durable and lasting.

Other commonplace uses for a laminator in offices include:

• ID cards
• Inventory lists
• Equipment guides and instructions
• Front covers for reports
• Presentation materials
• Phone lists
• Training materials

Some more sector-specific examples include laminating menus in bars, cafes and restaurants, which avoids inevitable spillages damaging them.

In healthcare where hygiene is of primary importance, laminating any documents that need to be in the clinic or ward means they can be wiped down and disinfected.

And in schools, laminating display materials and teaching resources means they are robust enough to be re-used over a long period of time. They can even be written on in board markers and then wiped clean.