Posts Tagged ‘failures’
The Xyron from heck
I recently bought a new in box Xyron 510, complete with all the sample cartridges. Great deal, because the new machines don’t come with all those sample cartridges that I’ve seen.
I owned one of these a few years ago, altho I think it was a slightly different model. I don’t think it did anything but adhesive. Gave it away because the adhesive around the edges of stuff bothered me.
Well, now I was thinking I’d like to have one to do some small laminating with. So, when someone offered up this NEW in box machine, I snapped it up. It’s not HER fault I have had such bad luck.
First thing I did was feed a couple bookmarks into it, as the double laminate cartridge was already loaded. That was a mistake. The machine promptly started crumpling my bookmarks and messing em up. I tried to rescue them, but it was no use. They were ruined. And so was the new Xyron. Somehow with my trying to rescue my bookmarks, I broke something inside. I could pull things thru, but cranking the handle didn’t do anything at all.
Well, I’m not going to let some machine beat me. I took it apart, saw the problem, and used some super glue to FIX the problem. I’d cracked the gear attached to the bottom roller so that it wasn’t able to make the roller go. (the top roller moves freely, only the bottom one is geared) I used lots of gel super glue, and glued that plastic gear to the metal roller. Let it sit over night, and instead of testing with laminate… I put the adhesive cartridge in. Works good.
So, it works again. Sort of has a hitch when you turn the handle as it gets to the part of the gear that is cracked, but I can deal with that. I do a bunch of things with adhesive, no probem. Go to put some bookmarks through with the double sided laminate again, and boom… this time I’ve got horrible wrinkles AND it grabbed the bookmarks unevenly so that they almost overlapped at the end. Sigh. Ruined more bookmarks.
I try the magnet laminate cartridge. Works fine, except that the adhesive on the magnet top won’t stick to anything. It sort of sticks to the laminate, but who wants big black borders around things? Yuck.
Now, my idea was to make a bookmark for everyone that joined my bookmark swap. I’ve already ruined a bunch messing with the Xyron. But I gotta keep trying, because the other way is to use laminate sheets, and those are not as heavy as they used to be. They’re okay, but not as nice as I like. Time consuming, too. Not to mention all those fingerprints I get on things sticky. Heh.
Okay, gonna try this again. I manage to get 6 bookmarks through the machine without anything messing up too terribly. Got some curl going on, but I cranked it out to start a bit to make sure I had all the wrinkles gone. I’m feeding the last 2 that I have ready to go in… get to the end, make sure they are sticking out enough, and slide the cutter bar across. It cuts the bottoms off my bookmarks AND at an angle. What? They were past the outside edge of the cutter guide, or so I thought. Sheesh.
I swear, I think this machine is possessed. But more likely, it’s just me and my inexperience with it. So when I was over in the big city last week, I bought a new double laminate cartridge, for the next time I want to do bookmarks. But next time I’m going with something square, like Debbie B in CO did. I’ll waste less laminate and won’t have to wrestle with trying to put 2 bookmarks through the machine at the same time.
That’s my story and I’m um, laminated to it. LOL!
Vyx
