Description
The GBC brand provides the level of pressure and heat necessary to
give you years of performance making quality PCB's time after time
plus GBC warrants this unit for 1 full year against failure.
Pulsar calls this GBC brand laminator a "Toner Image Applicator".
With Pulsar's 'DirectEtch' process, we're not actually laminating
anything, rather, we're using it as a controlled envelope of TIME,
PRESSURE and HEAT... the three basics of manipulating how to make
toner sticky without melting it.
What Is Special About GBC Laminators ?
What makes GBC the only laminator manufacturer that works with Pulsar process
is because of the way they redesigned the ordinary pouch laminator heaters.
The ordinary laminator uses two parallel heating plates after the rollers to
seal the pouch. GBC mounted two curved heaters, one above the top roller and
one below the bottom roller and radiate heat into the neoprene coated rollers
kind of like a rotisserie chicken cooker!
The term 'Pouch' by the way simply means you use pre-made envelopes instead of
two large rolls of laminating film that would come together to seal the item
(shown here) which is used only for the large, expensive, high volume "hot
roller" laminators. These $2,500+ units have heaters INSIDE the rollers.
A much more expensive way to heat rollers but necessary to keep up with high
volume production.
This is simply the best laminator giving you the greatest "bang for the buck"
for a reliable solution. The unit also comes with a full year "replacement"
limited warranty! It's a very dependable unit. It's also important to point
out here that any brand of GBC laminator will work for our purposes here,
so if you already have a GBC unit that has been purchased recently, there
is no need to buy another one. It'll work just fine!
The Iron vs. Laminator
The objective of a laminator over using a household iron is to have a controlled
environment of heat & pressure to cause the toner image printed on the
transfer paper to re-fuse in perfect detail to the circuit board being passed
through the unit. Every board will come out with a perfectly fused image which
is what differentiates it from using the household iron.
An iron can be made to work but it's up to the operator to calibrate the iron
(and maintain calibration) as well as being able to remember how much pressure
to apply to effect a good toner fusing. The main problem with the iron is that
you don't really know for sure that you've attained the proper temperature and
pressure ratio until the board has been put in the water bath. Only then,
after the paper has floated away (and parts of the toner image) does one
know for sure if the transfer was done properly. It'll always be a surprise!
If there is a failure of any part of a trace, one normally wipes off the
entire toner image with acetone and starts all over again. The "TIA" (or
laminator) concept is worth it's weight in gold for the serious hobbyist
through engineers.
Availability Of GBC Personal Laminator At Retail Stores
This "Personal" model is normally not found in stores other than a few very
large "mass marketers" like K-Mart, Staples, Target, etc. however, not all
of these mass-marketers elect to stock this particular unit from GBC. For
most of these mass-marketers, carrying an inexpensive laminator doesn't
necessarily require stocking the best working laminator made, thus, many of
the "mass marketers" will stock inferior models since quality isn't the
issue at that price point - basic functionality is and there are a lot of
other brands that can fill that requirement. This problem has in fact
resulted in unavailability of this unique model at your local stores.
This is why Pulsar elected to carry this model exclusively. Good news for
overseas customers. This exact model is available through out all of
Europe and "down under" by the model name of "H-65". This infers the 220v
wired version.
