Product of the Week

According to John Gilmore, managing director of Autobond, encapsulating is “probably the most disgustingly profitable process in the entire print industry”. Compared to laminating, the result is much more durable, but the process calls for more expensive consumables. The result is that encapsulating is charged at somewhere between three and eight times the price of the equivalent laminating job, but the margins are much higher. This is simply because encapsulating a volume job of anything greater than A4 format calls for machines that aren’t common in the UK, and the places they appear tend to be run by specialist trade finishers.

Hence the reason for Autobond’s latest machine, the Mini 76 TPE-H, a dual-function laminator-encapsulator. Laun­ched earlier this month, Gilmore predicts that the 76 TPE-H is set to “revolutionise the business of encapsulating. It puts cheap, easy and fast encapsulating into the hands of just about anyone. And the glory is, when you’re not encapsulating – which most UK printers won’t be, most of the time – you can laminate.”

Responding to demand
The machine has been developed in response to customer demand. To be more exact, the demands of 85 visitors to the Autobond booth at last year’s GraphExpo in Chicago, where Autobond showed its Sheetmaster 76E, a dedicated encapsulating machine, together with its Mini 76, a compact laminator. “People kept wanting to know if the encapsulator could laminate and if the laminator could encapsulate,” says Gilmore. “So I got to thinking: just how hard would it be to make a machine that did both?”

Not very hard at all, it turns out. Over the course of just a few months, Autobond’s factory in Heanor, Derbyshire, developed and tested the Mini 76 TPE-H. Based on the existing Mini 76 laminator, the hybrid machine can encapsulate and laminate at a speed of 60m per minute, either single- or double-sided. In laminating terms, that’s not the world’s fastest, but it’s not the slowest either; and in encapsulating terms, it’s a world-beater. “There’s never been encapsulation this fast,” says Gilmore.

The main difference between laminating and encapsulating lies in the film, which is thicker for encapsulating than laminating (an average of 25 micron for the latter and 75 – 250 micron for the former), and it’s the handling of the different types of film that makes up the heart of the hybrid TPE-H. When encapsulating, the film webs up around a 240mm-diameter chromed roller that serves as a pre-heat mechanism; the film is then webbed around two further 63mm heated rollers, this time covered in soft rubber. The smaller rollers are bypassed when laminating, as the chromed roller provides all the heat and pressure necessary for the much thinner film.

Multi-purpose
Likewise, the thicker films of encapsulating call for some different handling at the back end of the TPE-H: specifically, the addition of Autobond’s CC 76 cross-cutter to replace the nip-and-tear sheet separation facilities of a more standard laminator. The cross-cutter, developed last year for Autobond’s stand-alone encapsulating machine, works in tandem with two sensors to handle either underlapped sheets or gapped sheets.

For underlapped sheets, an ultrasonic detector reads the thickness of the sheet, determining where the underlap begins and ends, and activates an arrowhead-type blade to take a slug out of the web, removing the underlap and cutting flush to the edge of the sheet. For gapped sheets, a beam sensor detects the gap between the sheets on the web and activates a flying knife to put a single cut between the two.

The cross-cutter works in tandem with the TPE-H’s in-feed: sheets are driven into a sidelay and underneath a sensor that detects the gap between it and the previous sheet.

“If the gap is set to be, say, 8mm, and a sheet comes in at 10mm, the sensor activates a servo-motor with rollers that speeds it up a bit, till it gets to 8mm, or slows it down. So the gap is always maintained completely consistently,” explains Gilmore. In this way, the flying knife can make an accurate single cut, rather than a slug, saving on the encapsulating film costs.

The TPE-H has a few particularly useful features. To keep the floor tidy, it incorporates side slitters with an edge-waste rewind system that automatically takes the edge trim up onto a 76mm core. To handle the heavy plastics of floor graphics and the weighty magnetic materials, separate heavy-duty unwinds and rewinds are available that can be simply rolled away when not in use. The TPE-H also has the ground-breaking addition of Autobond’s new fault diagnosis system: a wireless webcam and cordless Skype phone, enabling an engineer to be virtually ‘with’ the breakdown within minutes.

Simple transfer
Changing from encapsulating to laminating, or vice versa, is “quite fast and easy”, according to Gilmore. A roll of film must be taken off and another one put on. Webbing up takes “just a few minutes”, followed by setting the sheet length and gap, the stock thickness and the width of the sheet, all via a central touchscreen. Entering the sheet data automatically sets the feeder and the front lays, together with the sheet and web-transport systems, including the cross-cutter. The smallest original document that can be fed is A5, as Autobond is limited by the constraints of its Heidelberg feeder at the front-end.

As well as standard double-sided encapsulating, the TPE-H can also handle single-sided encapsulation (if this isn’t a contradiction in terms) – for example, laminating with heavier film. This is useful for handling work such as floor graphics or laminating thin magnets.

While the TPE-H shares its compact frame with the Mini laminator on which it is based, it is 200mm wider due to the addition of extra side-plates that hold the smaller rollers in place. However, as Gilmore points out, that’s a small sacrifice of floor space for two useful processes in one machine.

Variable speeds
Gilmore also points out that, while the TPE-H’s rated maximum speed is 60m per minute, “it depends, as with all laminating and encapsulating, on the thickness of the film and the sheet size. If you’re running A4 sheets, you’ll get about 9,000 an hour out of it, because the limiting factor there is how fast the cross-cutter can work”. But 9,000 A4 sheets per hour still, as Gilmore says, “beats the pants off the slower traditional encapsulating machines in use at the moment.”

Gilmore anticipates that the Mini 76 TPE-H will be the first in a series of hybrid machines in different formats. “We already have two US customers who want 52cm-sized machines and one customer in the UK who can foresee a demand for other sizes,” he says. The versatility of the TPE-H, coupled with its small footprint and low cost, means this machine will sell to both printers and trade finishers. “We see huge potential from companies with a steady need for laminating, but a demand for encapsulation that doesn’t warrant buying a dedicated encapsulator,” says Gilmore.

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THE ALTERNATIVES
D&K Meteor NT
D&K claims a world first in automated encapsulation, having invented the cross-cutter 20 years ago. The Meteor NT – a dedicated encapsulator – is probably the closest competitor to the Autobond machine, but it’s still a quarter of the speed, even at top whack – 15m per minute for 42 micron film, down to 6m a minute for 250 micron. Also, with a maximum sheet-width of 685mm, it’s more of an SRA1 than a B1 machine; and its minimum size is just A4 to the Autobond’s A5. But it will handle a much thicker stock than the Autobond and is much cheaper.

Max speed 15m per minute
Max sheet size 685x1,020mm
Max stock thickness 3,000gsm (450 micron)
Film thickness range 30–250 micron
Price £71,600
Contact D&K Europe 01527 520073 www.dkeurope.co.uk

Lamhanson F800
Lamhanson founder Paul Johnson used to be a laminating line operator, so it’s no surprise that the Lamhanson encapsulating machines are stuffed with operator-friendly features – heated nip rollers for quick-start production, front-loading film rolls and heated rollers for scratch-free finishing. This dedicated encapsulator is the same size as the Autobond machine, but only two-thirds the top speed. Then again, it’s only a sixth of the Autobond’s price.

Max speed 40m per minute
Max sheet width 760mm
Max stock thickness 450gsm
Film thickness range maximum 250 micron
Price £17,995
Contact Lamhanson 0121 459 3747 www.lamhanson.co.uk

Autobond Sheetmaster 76 E
Autobond’s own dedicated encapsulator shares several features with its TPE-H sibling, including the cross-cutter and the additional heated rollers for fast working at high speeds. Like the TPE-H, it runs at 60m per minute, which offers fastest-ever encapsulation speeds; but it is just an encapsulator and can’t laminate.

Max speed 60m per minute
Max sheet width 760mm
Max stock thickness 450gsm
Film thickness range maximum 250 micron
Price £120,000
Contact Autobond Laminating Machinery 01773 530520 www.autobondlaminating.com