Hi,
You are right the temperature is to high for the side walls to resist.
I have been obliged to mill new ones in epoxy. Here you can find the CAD files if you want to do the same :
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Homebrew_PCBs/files/GBC_laminator_mod/JP
--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "RDHeiliger" <rdheiliger@...> wrote:
>
> I have had two of the GBC personal type laminators. They work fine for lower temperature toners. After my old Minolta printer with low temperature toner died, I bought an HP 1006. The temperature of the toner is much higher. I added an external temperature control to the laminator to get the toner to transfer. The resulting problem was that so much heat is transferred out thru the rollers that the plastic side frames melted. The roller bearings melted a slot in the side frames. I don't recommend this laminator.
>
> I have since bought a laminator with a metal frame. AL18P. The feed rate on this laminator is much to high, I replaced the motor with a DC gear motor and a cheap variable 6-24 VDC power supply. The temperature control also did not go as high as the spec sheet said it would. The temperature sensor looks to be a glass bead diode. It is mounted on a spring loaded arm that rides on the feed roll. Moving the sensor about 1/4" away from the roll increases the temperature enough to get pretty consistent transfers. I also reduced the spring tension on the rollers to reduce the spreading of the traces. I also had a problem with the connections inside the heating elements. The crimp connections inside the glass tube heating elements got so hot that the copper wires back to the control burned off. I had to stretch the nichrome elements out and make the connections outside of the glass tube. May sound like a lot of hassles but at least the side frames don't melt. It still takes 3 passes thru the laminator to get good transfers.
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> The direct toner methods seem promising, but the need of a separate laminator to do the fusing doesn't give it much of an advantage over just using paper for the transfer.
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> RD
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