Vacuum press or smaller?

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C

c-squared

Grumbler in Training
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Aug 24, 2009
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Live in Oregon
Hi All,

Just wondering what the collective wisdom is on dry mount presses versus the larger - and more expensive vacuum press. The only press I have ever used was on older Seal vacuum (48X60) or something close to that - it was huge and accommodated ever need. Now that I'm spending real money, the smaller presses don't look so bad. Any thoughts? When you do a poster with a small press and 4 passes, does that really work? Just wondering....Thanks!
C-Squared.:icon21:
 
If mounting and laminatıng is all you want to do, I would seriously consider a roller laminator (and it does not need heat - all heat provıdes in a roller laminator ıs speed).

A mechanıcal press does have limits and a vacuum press gives you many other creative possıbılıties.

With today´s ecnomy, there are great deals to be had on gently used vacuum presses. I sure would not invest (and that ıs what it ıs, an ınvestment in your ability to produce a better product) in OLD technology.

I have a 40 x 60 cold press and also a 51 x 100 heat press. If I had to do it over, I would not purchase the 51 x 100 and buy a roller laminator but roller laminators were not marketed to framers at the time and it is only by attending the PPFA trade shows that I learned about them.
 
Rob, where ARE you? How was Istanbul?
 
The 500T-X is the most versatile press out there. You can do 50" by any length in bites. I do a lot of oversized mounting and love the Heat/Vac presses but this is so convenient and quick to use.
 
Every one has their own opinion, of course. For me, I have an Seal Masterpiece with 26" x 32" platen that has served me since
1976, the largest available at that time. Yes, it is an antique and originally ran on methane gas (cow manure) but has been converted to electrical power since.

Seriously, I have had only a handful of projects over the years that the heat press would not work for. Primarily, those projects involved items that heat would effect: Children's art projects done with crayons; rubbings from tombstones and artifacts; various types of photographic images such as cibachromes, computer generated ink jet on glossy paper, studio portraits where the photographer has already used a spray lacquer finish, etc. I'm sure there are a few more projects that escape my memory at the moment. These alone may sway you toward a vacuum press. As Mr. Eastwood once said in a Dirty Harry movie, "A man has to know his limitations". So it is with a heat press.

My main objection to vacuum presses in the past has been spray adhesives and the need to provide an isolated area for a spray booth to evacuate fumes or spray carrying over to other areas. Perhaps this only shows my ignorance as to what other adhesives such as the roll-on types which are messy in themselves. Vacuum presses are limited by the size of the bladder that holds the item to be mounted. However, I have been able to use my heat press to mount long images that did not exceed the 26" (x 2) width limitations of the plate. This is similar to giclee printers that have width limitations but can print out images as long a the roll of material it is being printed on.

Heat roller presses seem to hold some advantages as long as flat images are being mounted but I have no experience there.

So, perhaps this serves only to raise the questions you have already been pondering but I still would gravitate to the heat press.
 
The majority of the Vacuum presses in use by framers now are combination heat/vac and the heat can be cut off for sensitive projects. The only thing I can't mount with the heat press is crayon drawings. Just did one this week with self stick adhesive board.
 
I love my 40x60 vacuum press, it has been a reliable workhorse since 1984. No regrets. I have never felt there was something I could not accomplish by not having a heat press. I do not specialize in large quantities of the same thing, so speed is not my issue.

I haven't used spray adhesive for decades. We roll paste, we counter mount, we weight, we use perfect mount pre-pasted boards on the tricking non porous stuff. We do fabric mats daily all in the vacuum press. Beautiful. My shop backroom is not expansive, I need as few bulky machines as are necessary. The vacuum press elegantly does everything I need in one machine, and I can walk away from it, no harm if it is left in longer then intended. Interruptions to serve customers is a regular occurrence, what does someone working while everyone else is out do in this case with a heat press?
 
Vacuum press vs Roller Press ?

I have both a vacuum press with no heat, and a roller press with heat. I rarely use the vacuum press anymore. For mounting the roller press works great -- and even then, I rarely use the heating element. I found that certain foam boards will buckle or crack with too much heat, especially the Hartman boards. The Bainbridge foam is more reliable when applying heat, but can bubble/buckle with too much heat. Therefore, I use the roller press without heat and it works great for most of my mounting. Thick watercolor papers and canvas mount needs heat to get a good bond.

The biggest advantage of the roller press is that you can stop it, reverse it, fix the problem and continue the press. And of course, the panoramics are a piece of cake in the roller press. No orange-peel effect with the roller press. The down side of mounting with a roller press is that have to get the alignment right, which takes a bit of time, then everything work well.

Ernesto
 
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