Lamenting Over My Laminator

Envision this: I'm in my design office looking out through floor-to-ceiling windows onto the back courtyard of the library. Bright red azalea flowers speckle hedges lining the edge of the building. It looks like springtime, but it is actually December. December in Florida. Ahhh...I think dreamily to myself, admiring the view and recalling what December in Nebraska and New York looked like for me back in the day. 

Next, my view panned into my office. What I saw inside immediately snuffed out any harmonious reflection I had about how beautiful the world was. Instead of being surrounded by beauty, I was surrounded by a menagerie of unsightly crap. Rolls of paper, card board boxes stacked up on one another, an out-of-order laminator that has become the bain of my existence, and facilities-owned step ladders rising up and into the ceiling where a water pipe had poured water down onto the drop ceiling, then onto a computer table and the floor, leaving a huge wet spot on the carpet. Ahhh...so much for harmony and beauty, I sighed. My office environment was in stark contrast to the beautiful azaleas and courtyard on the other side of the windows.

Because it is Christmas, let's use my office laminator as a parable for life for the modern day designer. Parables have been a favourite method of story telling for ages, so sit back and relax...clear your thoughts and let me tell you a little story about my life as a modern day designer.

Think back, if you will, to those glorious days in the 1950s when the boom of modern, space-age technology promised the average working American a more efficient, effortless way of life. Ah yes...automatic washing machines, toaster ovens, electric appliances of all manner—even cars with fins. Yes, those were the days when the sun looked its brightest as it crested the morning horizon, overlooking bottles of milk that were delivered fresh to your front door by the milk man.

Now, spin your time machine forward to present day. Here I am, looking at my design department's GBC Ultima 65 Laminator Canadian Model 4250. To me, it appears to have also been forged during that era of ultra modernity with a promise of easier days to come for anyone who need to laminate large sheets of paper. This machine—one that surely must have been the technological wonder of the industrial revolution—has now become the bain of my 21st century art room existence. When it works well, it is a dream to have laminated signs. But look out: when it suffers a jam, that promise of a sparkling workplace future comes to a complete halt—much in the same way that the paper and laminate film rolling through it does. 

Top: laminated paper get stuck going
around the rollers, melting in place.
Middle top: cutting/picking through
the laminated paper jam with an X-acto.
Middle bottom: The offending extraction.
Bottom: re-feeding a new paper into
the laminator.

There's no escaping the result of this when a jam occurs. Once it does, the rollers grind to a complete stop. They can't advance any further because of the adhesive wrap-around effect of the material trying to pass around a second time. Unfortunately, the rollers also can't reverse back out of the jam because while it's stuck in this position, the laminate is conveniently melting together and also fusing onto the hot roller surface. To compound the situation, there can be no work done to release the jam until the rollers have cooled down enough to touch, which can take around an hour of wait time. This means whatever project you were just working on will have to find another solution—like being reprinted and hung without laminating. Fortunately, this gummed-up situation rarely occurs when anything extremely important is needed on a tight deadline. I'm sure you believe me about that too...right?

So, how does one remove a jam from the Ultima Laminator? Basically you have to surgically remove it from the rollers. First, you detach and remove the metal feeding tray that you slide paper on top of as it approaches the rollers. Removing the tray will give you access to a lower lamination roller that feeds up and around the roller as it meets film coming from a second roller of lamination film positioned above the lower roller. Once the rollers have cooled sufficiently for you to touch, you must then carefully slice away the lamination-encased paper away from the rollers at an angle parallel to the surface of the roller in order to avoid cutting into the rubber rollers themselves. This is easier said than done, considering the lamination film has melted itself onto the surface of the roller. The process reminds me of trying to pull stickers off of recently purchased merchandise without tearing the stickers themselves. 

Just to put material costs into perspective, GBC—the company that makes the laminator machine—sells two rolls of their 10 millimeter Nap-Lam II lamination film for over US$258.00 per roll. I find this insane, because third party companies buy GBC's film and then sell it to consumers for US$32 per roll. That's just for film. Can you imagine how much it would cost to replace a rubber-wrapped steel rolling pin from GBC? We have to call them to find out; they don't post the price on the internet.

Once you have delicately sliced your way between the melted laminated paper and the roller, you need to advance the roller a short distance so you can try to pull it up off the roller surface. But you can't do this unless you can advance the rollers. They don't freely spin; they are locked into position and need to be advanced by turning the machine back on and using the forward/backward buttons. To do that, however, makers of this laminator require you to reassemble the feeder tray back into its operational position, then close a plastic canopy over the rollers in order for the machine to work. This is crazy! This means every time you need to advance the roller an inch or two, you need to take apart the machine, slice along the lamination film/paper jam, reassemble the machine, and turn it on for a mere second or less to advance the roller, then disassemble the machine to slice through the next segment of material melted onto the roller. Believe me, this is a tremendous waste of time...and designer talent!

In October I encountered such a scenario. A paper jam occurred. After a couple hours, I managed to clear the jam and put the machine back together. The offending project went on without being laminated before I could complete the machine maintenance. A couple weeks later, another jam occurred, and because of the other many design projects I had active deadlines on, I had to let the jam wait until I could get back to it—a couple of weeks later. After clearing that jam, the very next project I pressed into it also jammed. This time, I was so disgusted with the entire situation that I just let it all stay gummed up until I had enough down-time to spend playing repairman again. More weeks passed.

In the meantime, a librarian called to ask if I could produce a sign and laminate it. I had to say that my laminator was out-of-commission. He replied that we could send the project over to one of our other branches that had the same kind of laminator. What? Really? This was the first time I knew we had a second laminator at our disposal. I was happy to create and print the sign, then ship it over to the other branch to request they do the lamination and forward the finished piece on to the requesting librarian. Crisis averted. But in the meantime, my laminator remained in need of attention.

I wondered if perhaps projects were wrapping themselves around the rollers more frequently because of tiny flecks of heated lamination film remaining on the rollers after cutting away earlier jams. These flecks, still stuck to the rollers might possibly be attaching themselves to the new layers of film coming through the rollers as projects were being run through the machine. I decided the best way to find out and ensure that this wasn't the problem was to wipe down the rollers with bestine/turpentine fluid to completely remove the flecks from the rollers. In all, it took three hours to pick away all the layers of emulsified paper and laminator film, then rub the clean rollers down with bestine. Not looking forward to encountering the next jam, I still have yet to thread a new length of film into the machine.