Hot Pouch Laminating Issues - How to prevent one side from being wavy?

[CliffSpielman]

I'm having issues with laminating an 8.5x11 inch 80 pound cover stock document. I'm using hot lamination, specifically a pouch laminator. My laminating machines are a Sky 335R6 and Apache AL13P. In order to get the best results, I'm using a carrier.

ISSUE: What I'm finding is that the end of the document (in a carrier) going into the laminator first is coming out wavy. But the remaining 75% of the length of the document is not, and looks generally fine.

My first thought was too much heat, but I don't think that's the problem. I've tried turning the temp way down, to the point that the pouch isn't even sealed properly, and I still see this waviness on the side of left edge of the document, which goes into the laminator first.

Ironically, I get great results without a carrier, but I get lots of scratching - mostly on the underside of the resulting output - which in theory customers won't care about, but it doesn't look great.

If anybody has come across this type of issue and has any thoughts, I very much appreciate it.

 

[pippip]

We used a pouch laminator for a short while and it was never any good, similar results to what you are getting and never any logic to why. We quickly learned to just go and get a roll laminator. Perfect laminates every time. The roll laminators are very expensive compared to pouch but you quickly make the money back with the difference in film. Pouch laminators are just not designed for production or quality laminates.

Pouch laminators generally just have heat plates that the laminate passes through where the roll laminator has heated rollers that apply pressure to the film & stock.

 

[CliffSpielman]

Thanks for your confirmation that I'm not completely crazy. I'm starting to agree with your assessment, though I'm not sure a roll laminator is in my budget yet. The pouch laminators do have rollers, but still the results are inconsistent. For the moment, with my best machine, I've worked out a way to use a partial carrier underneath the pouch, that helps prevent the scratching underneath, but also exposing enough of the content to prevent the waviness. At least those were the results last time. Hopefully it will be the same when I try it again this weekend.