Laminates and Labels

Laminates
Lamination : joining together of thin layers or laminates
Lamination of polythene, cellulose acetate, polyester etc., to form clear
materials for packaging, particularly for the food industry
The ad:
Improvements in printability
Gas and moisture barrier qualities
Impact and burst strength and many others
This form of lamination is a reel to reel operation carried out at high speed on
very large machines and does not normally come into the print finishing field

The lamination of printed paper to film can be either a reel or sheet fed process
and may be applied to a wide variety of display material, boxes, and cartons,
record sleeves, book jackets etc.
Another area is document protection, eg. Map lamination, dry mounting for
photographic and art work
Films used for lamination:
Cellulose acetate, oriented polypropylene (OPP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and

polyester in calipers from 0.0125 mm to 0.025 mm with a variety of optical and

mechanical qualities available
The method of joining the two substrates together may be by the
Wet process
Dry process
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Wet process:
The film be coated with liquid adhesive of either the aqueous or solvent type
Solvent type is preferred as this enables the machine length to be shorter
The disadvantage of solvent type adhesive:
inflammable solvents

toxicity
possible difficulty in evaporation of the solvent
Solvents used are:

Toluol, ethyl-acetate, isopropyl-acetate and trichloroethylene

The units of wet lamination are:

continuous reel of film

an adhesive coating system

a drying tunnel or roller

Hand feed board or paper feeder for paper input

laminating nip rollers

cut-off table or re-reeling position

The film is reeled off and passed through the roller adhesive applicator
To obtain optimum conditions the solvent adhesives may be circulated through the

system by a pump and is filtered before being returned to the machine

The film web is then carried through the drying system of a tunnel or rollers and is
subjected to direct or air blown heat to evaporate off the solvent which is extracted
and blown off into atmosphere
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This leaves the film with an even coating of tacky adhesive

The printed stock is now fed by hand or from a pile feeder , so as to be slightly
overlapped and these make immediate contact with the

tacky film

in the roller nip

The rollers may be hot or cold according to the job

Almost immediately, the work may be slit apart by hand

or re-reeled for

subsequent processing
The width of the film will always be narrower than the print the trim is necessary

Dry lamination:
The film has been pre-coated and dried before being used
Two types are available:
one has a non-sticky film that is reactivated by heat
other has a tacky layer protected by a removable release sheet
The heated process uses film and tissue pre-coated, one side with heat sensitive

adhesives
The layers are brought together in a press having a heated platen or roller
system
The adhesive is reactivated and becomes tacky
Laminating to one or both sides of the sheet

The pressure or self adhesive films have a release paper to protect the adhesive
coating and this has to be peeled off before use
These materials are used for the protection of charts, display materials, book
covers etc., on a miscellaneous basis, eg. Laminating of book jackets that are
afterwards used for library rebind cases
Care should be taken to bring the two surfaces together so that air is excluded
otherwise bubbles and creases appear in the surface

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Test for the success of lamination:

Tear the layers apart how the adhesives pulls off the ink and perhaps the paper
fibers too
Excess adhesive: may effect the optical qualities of the finish and even show as an
orange peel effect
Patchiness may be caused by starvation of the adhesive and various bleeding and
ink discoloration effects may be due to residual solvents

Care in choice of inks and stock is necessary

Dry lamination is used more in miscellaneous work than in large volume production

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