With the straightforward yet effective process of lamination, you preserve, protect and enhance documents by encasing them in a robust, durable plastic coating.
Daily handling can leave fingerprints, rips, folds, spillages and stains in its wake. But with a laminator, your documents will look far more professional; plus you’re a lot less likely to damage important paperwork. Laminated items also last a great deal longer, especially if they’re leafed through frequently. (In fact, lamination makes pages easier to handle.)
Laminated print-outs, for example, just need a quick wipe to stay looking smart and readable. And the end result will appear highly professional, helping to project your brand image when it comes to presentations, brochures and similar materials.
Finally, the process enhances items by making the ink colours richer and deeper, and with greater contrast, so that your printed stuff is brighter, glossier and higher-quality.
It’s not just paperwork that you can laminate – you can use this process to protect business cards, staff ID badges, phone lists, certificates, signage and anything else you use daily.
How do laminators work?
Laminators add a slim plastic cover to paper documents through the use of heat, pressure plus an internal roller mechanism. Typically, pages are fed into the laminator singly, sandwiched either between the plastic sheets or lamination pouches.
Some have time-saving features such as a built-in memory function, so that you don’t have to reprogramme the unit each time you use it.
This really isn’t a task worth outsourcing, so your office needs its own laminator. There are a number of available options:
- Pouch laminators
With these models, you just slip your document inside the lamination pouch, and then the machine uses heat to seal the document and fuse the pouch together. (Pouches, by the way, come in different sizes, with A4 and A3 being the most common.)
Pouch laminators are easily stored and light so you can move them around. They’re also user-friendly and a doddle to operate. Equally, they’re the idea option for lower volumes of lamination.
- Roll laminators
These are typically better suited to a heavier-duty commercial setting needing high volumes of lamination. So they’re great if, for example, you need to laminate bigger items like posters.
- Automatic laminators
As the name implies, these models are fully automated. This significantly increases speed and efficiency while yielding top-quality results time after time, even for high volumes of A4 or A3 documents. There are no pouches; instead, a dual-sided roll-film cartridge does the work.
- Cold laminators
You would use a ‘cold’ laminator for something that can’t take the high temperatures of other machines. Vinyl, carbon copies and some photos are examples of this. These models use pressure rather than heat to seal the item. They’re small and unexpensive, although the pouches they use are more expensive than those for other laminators.
What to think of when buying a laminator
As when buying anything else, you’ll need to consider budget. Additionally, take into account how often you’ll be using your laminator, the size of documents you’ll be laminating, the speed at which your prospective machine works, and whether the volumes it can handle are what you need.
How much laminating will you be doing and how many people will be using the machine? How thick is the thickest pouch you’re likely to need? Are there any extra features you want to have? Finally, energy efficiency of your chosen laminator may be another key consideration.
Laminators from Octopus Office
At Octopus Office, we have a varied line-up of high-quality laminators and pouches to suit widely differing needs, all at reasonable prices – browse our range of laminators.
And we offer same-day delivery across the north-west, using our own vehicles. Further afield, we use our trusted courier partners, typically for next-day shipping UK-wide. Or, if you prefer, collect from our Stockport trade counter.
So browse online, and get in touch if you have any queries. Call 0161 429 8118 or email sales@octopus-office.co.uk.