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Use a carrier. This is the most important thing you can do when laminating. When you place your pouch and document in a carrier before laminating, you're greatly reducing the risk of hot glue seeping out of your laminating pouch. Glue that escapes from a pouch can really gum up your machine which can lead to pouch jams never fun or even a damaged laminator even less fun. It only takes a second to put your document in a carrier, but it takes even longer to resolve a pouch jam. And let's not even get into the horrors of a ruined laminator. You can prevent all of this from happening by using a carrier every time you laminate. Carriers are available in just about every box of laminating pouches you can buy you can also buy them separately and they can last a long time.
Choose the correct heat setting and pouch thickness. A lot of laminators give you the ability to choose which heat setting to use and the setting you pick depends on the thickness of the pouch you're using. Basically, the thicker the pouch, the hotter the temperature should be. If you don't want to turn up the heat you can also slow down the laminator assuming your machine offers an adjustable speed setting. If you are laminating a document that could be damaged by heat, be sure to use your machine's cold setting. If your machine doesn't have a cold setting, you can use self-sealing pouches without a laminator as long as you are careful to avoid bubbles.
Inspect your laminated documents. Once your items have been laminated, be sure to inspect them right away to see if they came out okay. If your item is hazy, you might need to turn up the temperature on your machine to get a crystal-clear product. If the item is wavy, the temperature was probably set too high. If that's the case, lower the temperature and try laminating your document again.
When all else fails, read the instruction manual. If, at retort pouch any point in the laminating process, you run into problems or you just have a question, be sure to consult your machine's instruction book. Laminating is a pretty simple process, but problems do pop up from time to time. Like the dreaded pouch jam. Different pouch laminators offer different solutions for dealing with pouch jams. Your owner's manual is a good source of info should you need help.