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An Rf Bar Welder - These are valuable tools for seaming awning panels and truck tarp sections. They
use radio frequency waves (like a microwave oven) to fuse vinyl or nonwoven fabrics. Yes, they could be used to tile banner
panels, but this is a large, expensive piece of equipment that makes sense for awning or truck tarp manufacturers but
not for banner sewing.
This is a Miller Weldermaster T-1000 hot air/wedge vinyl welder. It is perfectly capable of welding banner
seams, pockets, and hemming the perimeter of a banner. It is substantially larger and more than ten
times as expensive as a sewing machine. This is clearly overkill for anyone other than a large
format print house that is mass producing banners.
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Hot Air/Wedge Welding (also called Rotary Welding)
Sewing versus other hemming technologies
There are several technologies that are capable of either seaming, hemming
or fusing banner vinyls and fabrics. The best known of course is sewing which
has been refined over more than 100 years of continuous development. Newer fusing
technologies like hot air/wedge welding are superior to sewing in some applications (like seaming large panels together)
but are costlier to purchase and maintain and require more careful maintenance.
Hot air or hot air/wedge welding uses a concentrated stream of hot air with a metal contact wedge to fuse seams or hems. This technology is perfect for large applications like truck tarps which need large
panels connected and prefer to avoid needle holes on these seams. The material is pulled
through the fusing
device by a pulling wheel and for this reason is often called a "rotary welder." These require ample table space to lay out
and match up panels that are being welded. Smaller, portable welders like the Uniplan wedge move themselves along seams
and hems with the direction of the operater. They make sense for tiling but are awkward to use for hemming and much
slower than a typical banner sewing machine.
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Technologies cont.
In hot air welding heat and air flow can be varied for different fabrics but
these machines are better suited to fusing the same type and weight of material. Sewing technology is cheap by comparison
and requires almost no maintenance. A good banner sewing machine will sew through
a wide range of materials without adjustment. Further, there is no downside to
the small needle holes a sewing machine makes when hemming a banner's perimeter.
Sewing does require thread versus sealing to secure a hem. The cost of
thread is so minimal that it’s not a factor. A 6,000 yard spool of #69
nylon thread (typically used for banners), is less than $20.00 and will sew several hundred banners. So the cost of thread per banner is pennies. Besides this,
there is almost no other cost of operation for a sewing machine. Heat sealing
equipment and RF welding equipment require compressed air, more room, more careful maintenance and are more dangerous to operate
than a sewing machine.
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| A portable Uniplan hot air/wedge welder |
Call us for more detailed explanations of sewing vs. welding
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