Laminating is an excellent way to protect and preserve a wide variety of items, ensuring they remain in pristine condition. Here are some common items that can be laminated:

• Documents: Certificates, licenses, and other important papers.
• Photos: Cherished memories and keepsakes.
• Cards: Business cards, identification cards, and membership cards.
• Educational Materials: Flashcards, charts, posters, and worksheets.
• Crafts: Artwork, bookmarks, and various DIY projects.
• Menus: Restaurant menus and recipe cards.

• Signage: Cafe signs, maps, schedules, and Wi-Fi/password signs

Laminating these items not only enhances their durability but also gives them a professional and polished appearance. 

There are many benefits of laminating, here are a few highlights:

• Protection: Laminating items shields them from spills, moisture, creases, dirt, and damage, ensuring they last longer.
• Durability: Laminated documents and photos are more resistant to wear and tear, Perfect for anything handled frequently.
• Professional Appearance: Laminated materials often look more neat, polished and presentable, great for presentations, I.D cards, signage, or anything customer-facing.
• Preservation: It helps preserve important documents and keepsakes from fading or deteriorating.
• Ease of Cleaning: Laminated items can be easily wiped clean, making them ideal for frequently handled materials such as menus or pricing sheets.
• Reusability: Use dry-erase markers on laminated surfaces for checklists or worksheets and simply wipe clean and reuse, which saves time, effort, and paper.

Pouch laminators

These laminating machines are the most popular and easy-to-use models found in homes and offices. Simply place your document in a laminating pouch, and the machine will use heat to melt adhesive inside the lamination pouch and seal the document for you.

Pouch laminators are designed to be compact, user friendly and flexible for most standard laminating jobs, making them ideal for both home laminating or office laminating. GBC offers a wide range of lamination machines from home office and small office laminators which will be used occasionally to large office laminators designed to withstand frequent to heavy use. Unless you want to laminate in high volumes or have special laminating requirements, a pouch laminator will likely suit your needs.

Roll laminators

Roll laminators tend to be found in commercial premises like photography studios or print shops. They are better suited to high volume laminating than pouch laminators and make it easier to laminate products of lots of different sizes and shapes.

With a roll laminator, you place the document you are laminating into the machine where it will be fed between two adjacent rolls of film. Rollers then apply heat and pressure to seal the two layers together with the document inside. Once laminated the document is then trimmed either manually or automatically to release it from the device.

GBC offers a wide range of roll laminator machines catering for a variety of different sized media.  The latest innovation being the fully automatic Foton 30, which allows users to load up to 30 sheets, which are automatically fed into the machine using a document feeder.  These are then laminated and automatically trimmed before coming to rest on the desktop.  Designed with heavy usage in mind, this product can save users up to 98% of their time as you simply load, press play and you're done.

Cold Laminators

These use pressure instead of heat to laminate, making them suitable for heat-sensitive materials like receipts or inkjet prints.  A small number of our machines feature a cold setting for this type of laminating.

A pouch laminator is a type of laminating machine that uses pre-sized laminating pouches to encase documents. Here's how pouch lamination works:

• Preparation: You place your document inside a laminating pouch, which is a plastic sleeve with a sealed edge.
• Insertion: The pouch is then fed into the laminator sealed edge first.
• Sealing: The machine uses heat and pressure to seal the pouch around the document, creating a durable, glossy, and protected casing.

Pouch laminators and the pouches themselves come in different sizes. The standard pouch laminator is designed to take documents from ID card up to A3 in size. More compact versions are built for just ID Card to A4 documents. GBC lamination pouches are available in sizes A2 to A7 as well as bespoke sizes suitable for business or membership cards, luggage tags and more. A4 and A3 laminating pouches are the most common.

Choosing the right size laminator isn't just about matching the size of your documents. Most pouch laminators can accommodate various sizes, provided the pouch fits through the feed slot. While A4 laminators may seem sufficient for standard documents, A3 laminators offer significant advantages even if you never plan to laminate A3 sheets. For instance, an A3 laminator allows you to laminate two A4 documents simultaneously using an A3 pouch, or up to four A5 sheets at once- significantly improving efficiency. Additionally, A3 laminators support the use of A4 high-speed pouches. These are A4-sized pouches where the sealed long edge is fed into the laminator first (landscape orientation). This reduces the feed time, making the process up to 30% faster compared to laminating with the shorter edge first (portrait orientation). This is especially beneficial when laminating in bulk, as it enhances throughput and productivity. On the other hand, A4 laminators are more compact and better suited for environments with lighter workloads, such as home use or small offices.

One of the big attractions of pouch laminators is how easy they are to use. Here is a guide on how to laminate documents:

1. Prepare Your Document: Place the document you want to laminate inside a laminating pouch. Ensure its centred and free of wrinkles.
2. Select the pouch setting. Some smaller and more basic laminators only have one setting, but if the laminator is more advanced you will find different micron settings which you should match with your chosen pouches. Some advanced laminators feature sensors to automatically adjust to the appropriate temperature as the pouch passes through the laminator to help minimise the risk of mistakes.
3. Preheat the Laminator: Wait for the laminator to heat up – this is usually indicated by a red indicator light. You can't use a laminator the moment you switch it on. You must wait until it reaches the correct temperature, otherwise the laminating pouch will not seal properly, and you will get poor results. Most laminators will typically take between 1-3 minutes to reach their operational temperature. Typically, a green or blue indicator light tells you when it is ready. Generally speaking, more advanced laminators offer the fastest warm up times.
4. Insert the Pouch: Feed the pouch into the laminator, sealed edge first. Make sure it's aligned properly to avoid misfeeds or jams. Some of our laminating machines feature smart LED guides to help users feed laminating pouches straight through the laminator.  This lessens the risk of jamming or a poor-quality finish.
5. Wait for Lamination: Once inserted, the laminator rollers will pull the pouch through, applying heat and pressure to seal it. This usually takes between 15 to 45 seconds depending on the machine being used.
6. Cool Down: Once the pouch exits the laminator, lay it flat for a few seconds while it cools. This helps the lamination set properly and avoids curling.
7. Trim Excess: If needed, trim any excess laminate from the edges using scissors or a paper cutter but leave a bit of a plastic edge so the seal doesn't break

Tip: Use the Right Pouch: Ensure you're using the correct size and thickness of pouch for your document and use good-quality pouches for the best results. If you are not sure, you can use our handy lamination pouch finder below to help you find the right laminating pouch for your project.

For the best results and long-lasting protection of your documents, we recommend using our high-quality, GBC laminating pouches.  They are specifically designed to work seamlessly with your GBC machine, ensuring a flawless finish and superior durability compared to lower value generic pouches.  They are also the best way to protect and enhance the performance of your GBC machine over the longer term as both are designed to work together as a laminating system.

If you're shopping for or comparing laminators, here are the most important features to look for when searching for the best type of laminator to buy -whether you're using it at home, in a classroom, or for business:

Micron settings: This dictates the maximum thickness of the lamination pouches that you can safely use with the laminating machine.  250-micron (for 2 x 250 pouches) is typically the highest setting for most high-end pouch laminating machines.  80-micron (2 x 80 pouches) is suitable for most everyday lamination needs and is found on all machines.

Warm up time: The faster the warm up time the less waiting you need to do.  Although slower warm up times provide time to prepare and load your lamination pouches. One minute warm-up times are typically reserved for machines in higher usage environments to reduce wait times.

Throughput speed: This is the speed at which the laminator laminates.  This is normally specified in millimetres per minute (mm/min).  Be sure to compare like for like.  At GBC we also share the time it takes to laminate a single A4 document using a standard 80-micron pouch as this is often more meaningful.  Remember, the thicker the pouch the longer the lamination process often takes.  First reason is typically a longer warm-up time to get to a higher temperature and secondly, some higher-end machines that laminate 175 or 250 micron pouches will slow down the laminating speed for these thicker pouches to maintain a high-quality finish.

Other Features: Consider features such as automatic shut-off, which powers down the machine after a period of inactivity to save energy. Many newer GBC laminators feature an active standby feature which can sense if laminating is taking place and will switch off after 15 minutes. Additionally, jam release / reverse functions are important to prevent misfeeds and protect your documents from damage. Some higher-end GBC models also have an auto reverse feature which is designed to protect the laminator from any potential damage from misfed pouches.

Choosing the right laminating pouch is essential for achieving the best results. Here are some key factors to consider:

• Size: Ensure the pouch matches the size of your document. Laminating pouches come in many sizes, including A3, A4, A5, A6 and even smaller sizes like business cards.
• Thickness: The thickness of laminating pouches is measured in microns. Thicker pouches (e.g. 175 microns per side) provide more rigidity and protection which are good for things like menus, while thinner pouches (e.g. 80 microns per side) offer more flexibility, which can be good for internal signage. To help you decide what thickness of laminating pouches is the best, we provide a lamination pouch product finder.
• Finish: Choose between a glossy or matte finish. Glossy pouches enhance colours and provide a shiny appearance, while matte pouches reduce glare and are ideal for documents that will be frequently handled or used in conditions where bright light is a problem due to their non-reflective finish.
• Special Features: Some pouches come with additional features like UV protection to prevent fading, adhesive backs for easy mounting, or pre-punched holes for easy filing.

• Quality: Go with trusted brands - cheap pouches can bubble, wrinkle, or not seal properly. They can also be bulked out with extra adhesive which can leak onto the laminator rollers over time and lead to jams, so they are best avoided.