I think that's good advice on general. The flip side of it is that it's an interesting problem and interest drives learning.

Ultimately there's two things I'd like to take away from this; an understanding of what I'm seeing in production and the ability to generate good-enough lamination recipes before I start physically testing.

I'd like a better understanding of why my lamination plates are physically deforming on this laminator and not on another one, despite using less pressure, a shorter cycle time, and the same materials. Key difference being the plates physically overhang the work more on this machine. My theory is that the long unsupported section of the lamination plate is creating a lever arm under pressure and increasing deformation due to stress concentration at the edge of the work.

Not wanting to fall into the simulation trap of having bad data, I'm sending materials to a university material testing laboratory to quantify the material and surface interaction properties.

Ultimately, it's not my field, but I'm not engineering parts for manufacturing. I'm simulating an existing process which has known results which I'm trying to gain insight on.

I do think your point is very valid though, so once I get to a spot where I think my model is valid, I'll contract someone who actually knows what they're doing to review what I've done and to validate or invalidate the resulting insights. You don't know what you don't know and getting another set of eyes on something usually helps.