Finishing & Screen Printing
New Orders Follow Autobond Mini 105 Tphs Installation At Grovetree Press
Monday 07. January 2008 - Canadian laminating house, Grovetree Press, says that by the end of December it had laminated almost one million sheets on its new Autobond Mini 105 TPHS since the machine went into production in October. The Mini 105 TPHS has also won some major new business for the Toronto based company, as president Ron Heggie explains.
“The Mini 105 TPHS is our first Autobond laminator, although there are two other Autobond models within the NAPCO Group of which we are a part, so it was easy to obtain some unbiased advice from existing users,” says Mr Heggie, who formed Grovetree Press nine years ago. “We are also friendly with a Swedish laminating house that was familiar with the same model that we were considering and they gave us a glowing report on the Autobond machine.
“The impact that the Mini 105 TPHS has had on our business has been significant. We have won several big orders because of the Autobond laminators format and output speed. One repeat job, to laminate 175,000 23?x 35? sheets both sides, was previously split between several different trade houses because of the size and timescale, and in past years we didnt even get a part of the work. This time we operated two shifts on the Mini 105 TPHS for about eight days and handled the whole project.
“The Mini 105 TPHS will take a 41? sheet landscape and we can feed sheets at over 200 feet per minute, which is a huge output. In addition, the ability to laminate both sides in one pass more than doubles production of that type of work. None of our other laminators offer perfecting, so this facility has been a real bonus in terms of the delivery times we can offer clients.”
The Mini 105 TPHS at Grovetree Press is fitted with a rising pile, back separation Heidelberg Speedmaster 102 feed head and a vacuum feed table. The laminator can handle stock from 8.5? x 11? up to 41? x 30? and in weights from 60 lb to 24 pt. The feeder and stacker are both equipped with mill skid plates, which enable a full pallet to be loaded directly from the press and laminated sheets returned back into pile form. The high quality construction allows the laminator to apply pressure in the nip rollers of up to six metric tonnes. The footprint of the machine is only 12 feet x 6 feet.
“One of the biggest attractions to us of the Autobond Mini 105 TPHS was its compact size,” says Ron Heggie. “We needed more laminating capacity but didnt want to move premises. Space was tight but the Mini 105 TPHS is extremely compact and fitted into the factory without a problem. We run OPP and polyester on a wide variety of stock and the laminator has proved to be easy to operate and reliable. Autobond USA has provided us with first class service.”
Autobond is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of sheet-fed film laminators, both thermal and water-based, and is a major supplier of thermal and water-based films and manufacturer of adhesives, which can be used on most makes of laminator. The company has customers in more than 145 countries.