Why You Should Use A Cold Laminator

Blogged in Cold Laminators Thursday January 18, 2007 at about 12:28 am

There are lots of people particularly business workers that possess highly sensitive and classified documents. These documents are usually in the form of paper and it remains to be the most frequently used communication media. Paper is quite fragile and a lot of care is needed to make sure the documents are safe from damage. Also presenting well-written reports on a standard piece of paper may not be the most appealing thing and fancy paper won’t add anything protective.

Those that are looking for a good way to protect these sensitive documents and media may have tried placing them in folders or even framing them, but none provide any long lasting protection the way laminating does.

An Introduction to Laminating

Laminating successfully does what folders and frames can’t do and that’s providing full protection to the document while still keeping it readable and transferable. Laminated documents are virtually waterproof and keep all the dirt at bay. The document that is sealed within the plastic layers is totally safe and looks professionally finished.

Laminating is done by guiding the document along with a film or pouch through a set of rollers. Heat roll and pouch laminators have rollers capable of producing heat in order for the film to glue on to the document thus sealing it in. The ones that don’t have any heat involved in the process are known as cold laminators.

What are cold laminators

A cold roll laminator is a special laminator that do not make use of heat in sealing the document in the plastic. Because of the lack of heat involved, cold roll laminators use a different plastic film that is coated with an adhesive but with a glossy backing that doesn’t stick to the glue. This glossy backing is removed as the document goes through and in the end adheres to it.

What are their advantages

The primary advantage of using cold laminators is that any documents going in are guaranteed to be safe from any damage. Sometimes the heat generated by other laminator machines can slightly damage delicate material like photographs and other sensitive media. A lot of other papers containing ink printed by inkjet printers were also incompatible with the heat roll laminators.

What are their disadvantages

Cold laminators use different supplies than the hot-roll laminators and are a bit more expensive. Cold laminator pouches are also more difficult to find especially in certain sizes. Heat is a necessary element in spreading the adhesive to reduce the chances of air bubbles appearing within the laminate. Since this is absent in the cold laminator process, sometimes the lamination isn’t perfect unless a good device is used.

Conclusion

Despite their disadvantages, cold laminators are rising in popularity and as that popularity grows, cold laminators will become more advanced and persist in being the cost-effective and safe way for laminating. Your documents will be a lot safer using cold laminators and all it takes is to get a good cold laminator with good film to do the job well.