Foiling | Sleeking Laminators

Foiling and Sleeking Laminating Machines

One of our many specialties is "Sleeking" also known as "Toner Foiling" and TFP offer one of the most diverse range of Sleeking and Foiling machines on the market with everything from entry level but highly capable desktop machines, such as the Multi-Lam Foil FX and Multi-Lam Foil FX Auto, through to the high end GMP Q-Topic 380 in both semi and fully automated setup.

The Finishing Point have built up a trusted and long standing relationship with GMP UK and are proud to be their Northen UK Partner taking care of sales and service requirements throughout the North of England. GMP Global were established in 1985 in the South Korean city of Seoul forming to produce high quality laminating and encapsulation films.  It is this expertise and depth of knowledge that gives GMP a significant edge when it comes to manufacturing laminating films and laminating machinery. The Seoul operation has an annual turnover of more than 70 Million US Dollars, holds 69 individual patents and 340 registered trademarks worldwide with a purpose built factory stretching over two sites and measuring in excess of 20,000 square meters. This is the reason GMP machines are widely regarded as work horses due to their incredible build quality.

Due to our own detailed understanding of the Laminating and Sleeking markets we have managed to source our own machinery which perfectly compliments the range we partner with GMP. Our Multi-Lam Foil FX models offer a compact, reliable, heavy duty desktop laminating and sleeking solution that perfectly fits the short run digital print markets. We have several customers who use our Multi-Lam range purely for applying sleeking effects as it removes the need to take work away from the laminator and often these jobs are very low volumes due to the bespoke nature of the sleeking effects.

What is Sleeking and Foiling and How does it work?

Sleeking or Foiling opens up a new avenue for digital print, being able to customise and personalise with foiling, spot UV style effect and a variety of different holographic and metallic finishes so what exactly is sleeking?

Sleeking is a process often referred to as foil-fusing or toner foiling where heat activated foils are used to create special effects on toner based inks. The hot foil films are available in literally any colour and effect you can think of and the technique is not a new one meaning pretty much every conceivable effect or idea has already been created and just waiting for you to discover it. The foil effects are only attracted to toner based inks, although they do also work with HP Indigo inks, as the foil effect is processed it selectively absorbs into just the black toner therefore peels off cleanly everywhere else.

Sleeking is not just about applying metallic finishes to black toner, there are literally no limitations except your imagination with many customers able to produce some truly amazing effects. All the foils are over-printable meaning, you can create metallic ink effects with ease. Further to this you can also lay down a protective soft touch laminate over a normal print before applying your black toner to that protective layer, this is then passed through a toner printer before the sleeking laminator can apply hot foil to the resulting black image in a second pass. This same method is used to create Spot UV effects which are printed in colour on top of the protective laminate layer before being processed through the sleeking machine to add the clear gloss or matt varnish.

Which sleeking machine is best for me?

This question is a common one and many manufacturers will advise you to purchase a high end machine with pneumatic pressure to ensure best results. However, the pneumatic pressure is only really needed when applying laminate over a full colour digital print, even then it is not always needed if you are using a high quality digital film such as Ultrabond. Foiling & sleeking foils actually need very little pressure and can actually be produced with a basic pouch laminating machines but this does limit the effects you can create and is tricky to master.

The question you need to ask yourself is really about volumes and what you are hoping to achieve with the machine. The best selling models are the Multi-Lam Foil FX and the GMP Q-Topic 380.