Roll Laminating Machines

Roll Laminating Machines for all Budgets & Requirements

The Finishing Point have built up a trusted and long standing relationship with GMP UK and are proud to be their Northern 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 markets we have managed to source our own machinery which perfectly compliments the range we partner with GMP. Our Multi-Lam Foil FX & Multi-Lam Burst models offer a compact, reliable, heavy duty desktop laminating & encapsulating machine that is ideal for the education and copy shop markets. Our Multi-Lam range have plenty of extra features on offer as well including sleeking and foiling capabilities on the Foil FX and auto burst sheet separation on the Multi-Lam Burst, this functionality makes them the ideal companion to any digital or education print department.

What is a Roll Laminating Machine?

A traditional heated roll laminating machine uses two heated rollers, one top and one bottom, to melt glue extruded into the rolls of lamination film. The product requiring encapsulation or laminating is then fed into the machine either manually or automated depending on the machinery type. The material is processed between the two heated rollers which are normally clamped under spring pressure although there are alternatives with pneumatic pressure now available. This pressure forces the glue on to the material and seals it on all 4 sides to create a sealed document known as encapsulation. If you apply laminating film to just one side then this is laminating and on two sides without sealing this is double sided laminating. Most machines can now offer all three options in one compact package. 

The primary purpose of laminating with such a machine is to embellish or protect printed documents or images, ideal for precious items such as Photographs, Plans, Wills or important documentation. We supply the all types of machinery from the smaller roll laminating machines suitable for offices and schools to the larger, industrial sized roll laminating machines for copy shops & print finishing companies.

Roll Laminating vs Pouch Laminating

During the 90's and early 00's the advantages of roll laminating over pouch laminating were very clear, pouches in comparison to roll film were very expensive due to the manufacturing costs of laminating pouches. However, the emergence of China as a manufacturer caused prices on laminating pouches to tumble rapidly and by the mid 00's roll laminating film prices were around the same as pouch film. This lead to a resurgence of the pouch market due to the ease of which they produce a high quality product that is both complete and round cornered once finished.

However, traditional roll laminating machines still has several advantages over pouch machines. Pouches although easy to process require the operator to load the materials into the pouch, for small quantities this is fine but for volume this is far too time consuming. Once you reach a certain volume of production it makes far more sense to use a roll laminating machine as oppose to a pouch laminating machine, this becomes even more prominent with the emergence of automatic laminating machines with slitting and cutting capabilities such as the Fujipla ALM3222 and Fujipla ALM3230.

Even at the lower end of the spectrum with traditional roll laminating machines you can still opt for automatic feed and depending on the film type you are using automatic sheet separation too. Machines such as our Multi-Lam Foil FX Auto offer a fully automated feed up to stocks of 300 gsm with the foil rewind device doubling up as a product re-winder. This combination means the machine can be left to run it self, the sheets will be auto fed, laminated or encapsulated and reeled on to the rear mounted rewind device ready for trimming afterwards. These machines are the perfect solution for the busy school or college print room due to their compact nature, ease of use and most importantly their cost effectiveness.