Laminating of printed products is covering of printed production with a film. The basic purpose of lamination is protection of the image against various external influences.


Laminating is made by a special device called laminating machine.

Lamination can be:

cold or hot

one-sided and double-sided.


The laminating machine consists of transient and clamping devices, shafts. The elemental models have one pair of shafts combining feed motion and pressing function. Office and professional laminating machines are equipped with two pairs of shafts.

Special-purpose laminating machines can have three pairs of shafts for increased pressing. Two pairs of shafts are sufficient for lamination of high quality. If the laminating machine is intended for hot lamination, it has one of three possible variants of the heating element: heating plate, heating shafts (forward pair), combination of heating plate and heating shafts. As a rule, all modern laminating machines can perform both cold and hot lamination. Depending on whether the laminating machine can work with a rolled film, laminating machines are divided into rolled and envelope types. This type of laminating machines does not have unwinding device for use of the rolled film. Depending on complexity of a design the laminating machine can change temperature, speed, run of shafts, save lamination mode, switching-off automatically after cooling of the heating element.


Special film with thickness from 24 microns to 250 microns is used for lamination.

The film with highly-transparent gluing system actuated by pressure is used for cold lamination.

Hot lamination is carried out under the influence of pressure and temperature.

There are the following films for lamination:

Glossy. These films perfectly represent the image colour, its saturation and brightness.

Glares arising on a glossy surface prevent to see tiny details, for example, the information text.

Matte. These films ensure no glares and provide with possibility to apply inscriptions on a surface. These inscriptions are easily erased by usual rubber. The matte film looks more dignified and is applied for lamination of business cards and expensive advertising production.

Textured - for example: "Sand", "Canvas", "Flax", "Champagne splashes", "Cloth". These films are used for decoration of a surface.