Roll laminators come in many different variations for different kind of utility. These can be particularly handy for businesses, educational purposes or the creative home artist. This laminator is mostly to be used by the graphic design industry. Wherefore there are also wide format laminators available.
There are basically two kinds of roll laminators;
- Cold Roll laminator is being used for materials which cannot resist any heat, such as papers and inks that are increasingly common in modern printers. This is also cold a pressure sensitive laminator and works with an adhesive activated by pressure instead of heat. The adhesive is covered by a top layer which does not stick to the glue. Removing this layer let emerge the coated layer which then will contact the underlying surface where it is glued up on. Basic models do not require electricity and are because of that very convenient to use at any location, regardless of whether electrical provision is present. More advanced laminator machine have fully adjustable rollers that control the pressure on the rollers. Some of them do are suit with a heating component
- Hot Roll laminator is a machine that is primarily to be used for a high volume output. Heated rollers extrude a melted adhesive on to the laminating film. The hot roll laminator is so fast because it uses so called heat shoes or heat rollers to activate the glue which is coated to the film. This melts the adhesive in advance and makes it possible to speed up the process. A benefit of the heated laminator is that it is cheaper with laminating supplies. These are proportionally cheaper to make instead of cold roll laminator supplies. The hot model is also available with the adjustable settings as mentioned above.
Roll laminators commonly use two rolls of laminating film, one on top and another roll at the underside.