The GBC Ultima 35 was introduced to thelaminating machine market as an answer to a couple of needs. First, itwas designed to be a low-cost roll laminator that just about anybusiness, church or school could afford. Second, they wanted to addressthe ongoing problem of users feeding roll laminators incorrectly anddamaging their machines. Here we take a look at the Ultima 35 and listwhat we consider to be its strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths:

1. One of the first things we noticed (and liked) aboutthe Ultima 35 is the extremely fast warm-up time of one to two minutes.This compares extremely favorably to almost any other machine on themarket, and should be a big boost to productivity. The big shining feature of the Ultima 35 is that it finally addressesthe problem of inexperienced or distracted users loading the laminatingfilm backwards on roll laminators. In other words, users who, quite byaccident, load their laminators with the adhesive side facing towardthe rollers. We don't know of you have ever done this on a rolllaminator, but rest assured all it does is create a huge mess, andusually a service call is required at that point. The Ultima 35 hassolved this problem by use of a specialized type of laminating filmthat has a different sized core on each side of the film. This makes itabsolutely impossible to load the film the wrong way. The Ultima 35 is pretty versatile, accepting roll film from 1.7 to10mil thick. This means that you will be able to laminate just aboutany sort of document in all of the

   Roller Blinds Fabric

2. available rigidities. In theory,that is. For the first year that this machine was on the market 10milfilm was not available. However, GBC recently released both 7mil and10mil film for use with the Ultima35. Also, in 2008, GBC made availablesome matte films for the Ultima 35 in addition to their standard glossfilms.  Some of the other things that we reallyliked about the Ultima 35 were that you can adjust the speed at whichit laminates, which is great for laminating different paper styles andmaterials. Also, this machine has both forward and reverse functionshelping with any wraps or jams that may occur. And finally, we reallyappreciated the inclusion of a handy built in trimmer to help with thefinishing process.

Weaknesses:

1. We suppose one could consider it weakness that all ofthe supplies intended to be used with the Ultima 35 (such as laminatingrolls) are proprietary. This means is that the user will be required tobuy and use the rolls that are specifically designed by GBC to workwith this machine. Unfortunately, these supplies are a little bit moreexpensive than other similar supplies that are available. However, thismachine is so much lower in price (not to mention feature-rich) thanmost other similarly equipped laminators on the market, it may be wellworth it in the end.  Though, as we mentionedabove, you can't load the Ultima 35 the wrong way, loading it the rightway is not the easiest thing in the world, and may take you a time ortwo to master. Once you've got the hang of it, however you should bebreezing along.