5-7 Simultaneous Laminating and Mounting
There are several different ways to simultaneously mount and laminate. The
one preferred by most experienced users, especially those in digital imaging,
is to hot laminate while mounting with a pressure-sensitive adhesive at the
same time.
Cut a piece of your pre-coated substrate (mounting board) slightly larger than
your image. Peel back about 4 inches of the release liner on the edge that
will be put into the laminator first (leading edge).
Use that exposed adhesive to position and align your image on the board.
Be careful to keep the leading edge of the image aligned and wrinkle-free.
Smooth it down onto the exposed adhesive. The image does not need to be
trimmed to final size first since finish trimming of board and image will be
done together after laminating.
When the laminator is threaded and up to temperature put the leading edge
of the board with its image under the feed strip on the leading edge of the
feed tray. The feed strip should lift easily to accommodate substrates up to
½ inch thick. The laminator should be set 10 or 20 degrees hotter than what
you would use on that film for standard laminating. The fan should be turned
off.
Keep the board in that position. Do not let it advance far enough to touch the
shoes yet. Make sure the laminating rollers are closed and locked. The pull
rollers should be closed but not locked. Start advancing the film. Once the
film that was resting on the shoes has been advanced push the board
squarely into the nip.
Hold onto the release liner. Do not let the release liner go under the safety
shield. The curl of the release liner will help keep the image off the board
until it gets close to the laminating nip.
Laminating both sides of the item helps save the setup time that would be
wasted in preparing the machine for one-sided lamination. Another
advantage of laminating both sides of foam core and some other substrates
is that it minimizes the curl that those substrates are subject to over time.
No adjustment of the laminating rollers is required. They are spring-loaded
and will open appropriately for any board up to ½” thick. When using ½”
thick substrates close laminating rollers, but do not lock them.
After the lamination is complete, trim the board and its now resident image to
the finished dimensions. Final finishing steps may include edge grippers for
33
