GBC H312 Laminator Review

The H312 replaces the H310 in the GBC HeatSeal line of pouch laminators. Like its predecessor, this machine is targeted toward small business or home offices that do light to moderate amounts of laminating and need the flexibility to process larger documents. Here's a quick peek at what we consider to be this machines strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths:

1. For such a relatively low-end machine, we thought the H312 has some rather nice features and capabilities. For instance, this machine can laminate documents with both 3mil and 5mil pouches and perhaps best of all, its wide throat will allow the user to laminate such documents as menus and other larger sized documents with ease.
2. We liked the H312's ability to do cold laminating. With its variable temp control, the user can set the H312 to work with SelfSeal type cold laminating pouches. In our testing, we found that having this sort of flexibility allowed us to get nice, picture perfect lamination no matter what kind of paper we were using.
3. With any laminating system, jams are always a risk. This is especially true when you are talking about infrequent use by inexperienced users. We really appreciated the fact that the H312 comes with a jam release that will let the user pull the rollers apart temporarily so that a pouch that gets jammed in the rollers can be easily removed.
4. The H312 also includes a pouch cleaner sheet that will allow the user to clean excess adhesive that may eventually collect on the rollers.
5. We considered it a nice touch that GBC saw fit to include a handy trimmer with the H312.

Weaknesses:

1. The H312 will not accept 7mil or 10mil pouches. This is not going to be a problem for most applications and especially for most of the users at whom this machine is targeted. However, it is something to keep in mind, especially when you consider the fact that by choosing GBC's next model up, the user will have the ability to process 7 and 10mil pouches. The price, in fact is not all that different.
2. The H312 makes a point of boasting about its carrier free and jam free operation. What you don't realize until you put on your reading glasses, however, is that this only applies to use with GBC's own brand of pouches, and most importantly, make a point of cleaning the rollers on a regular basis. To do this, you simply have to run the cleaning sheet through the machine. If you don't do this, or if you happen to make a habit of using pouches with a higher level of adhesive, you risk the danger of wrapping the pouches around the rollers, at best making a huge mess, and at worst, ruining the machine.
3. Though you can control the temperature setting on the H312, there is no speed control available. The speed of the machine is average, neither especially fast nor slow, but for some materials it is beneficial to be able to change the speed of the process. Not a huge problem or anywhere near a deal breaker, just something to be aware of.