Winter Laminating Blues
The cold weather is upon us and here in Connecticut it has been cold the past couple of weeks. When the weather turns colder, the static electricity seems to increase many fold, making controlling dirt and keeping film from wrinkling more challenging. We do clean up every day, but this time of year that is not enough especially with some of our adhesive coated products.
One of the products we sell is adhesive coated plexiglas and the adhesive we use is an optically clear adhesive. That adhesive has a polyester liner which seems to generate more static charge. That plus the adhesive is very thin to help the clarity and can be difficult to process. Running this would be the same as over-laminating films with a gloss laminate film.
To control this we have taken the following steps:
- We wet down the floor before we begin to coat plexiglas.
- We wipe down the idler bars and feed in tables with the cloths you use in a dryer with your clothes.
- We control the release liner and make sure it is removed closer to the nip (we make sure the liner is taken off after the film comes in contact with the main roller). This adds more rigidity to the film as it is applied and it has less chance to wrinkle.
These steps have helped a lot but still sometimes this can be a difficult. Anybody who has other thoughts on how they manage this through the winter would be welcome. Thanks.