This week at work we printed one of my pieces, a 2’x3’ poster that will be at a convention in Manhattan for a training event. Just as I was about to leave on Tuesday my supervisor calls me over to see the laminating process in action so I can learn to do it. Lately I was shown how to use big machines at work that will provide us interns with a lot of to-do’s going forward.   One machine was the brochure machine, which spits out air and uses two rulers to adjust how the paper is folded. I believe I spoke of this machine in an earlier blog. The next machine we learned how to use was a huge printer that needs to be loaded up with a roll of paper that’s about ¾ the size of me. After that you feed the end of the roll to the printer and it cuts a straight line along the edge you just fed it, in order for your work to be straight. After that, if everything is aligned you will be able to choose your settings and proceed as normal. If the paper is not aligned correctly you wont be given the option to continue and in fact the printer will alert you and force you to realign the roll and paper until its perfect. It’s a nice feature to ensure your work is always pristine but at the same time can be quite annoying. The next machine I learned about was a cutting machine that uses a a sharp piece of metal and the aid of a laser to cut through anything pretty much. We load up the print job and use knobs on the edge of the “table” of the machine to adjust the positioning of the cut we want. After that is taken care of we close a plastic lid over the edge so no scraps fly out and hit us, and we finally push two buttons simultaneously to summon the blade and make a nice cut through around 50 sheets of paper or slightly more at once.

Now back to the lamination machine. This poster had to be printed on the huge printer I mentioned. Afterwards that sheet was trimmed down to around 3 inches from the crop mark and placed in an “envelope” of sorts. It’s a piece of foam core that has a plastic sheet over it. The printed piece goes between those two elements and you then feed that into the lamination machine, which melds everything together using heat. I was taught about the air bubbles and how to combat against those which is something I’ve dealt with as a student with mounting things. Finally, we were ready to cut it down to size but unfortunately only had access to an x acto knife, so the process was extremely tedious and we had to do this for 2 posters. After gaining all this production knowledge, I’m pretty well equipped now to move forward as my internship continues. It was definitely an enjoyable experience and one I’ll always value.