Artgrafix Blog

If you have experienced bubbles when mounting or laminating with Sintra, Komatex or solid pvc, you are not alone.  Sintra is an extruded product and can have variances or high and low spots across the board (and even vary small variations can cause trouble with lamination!).  If you do not have enough pressure to press your film down in the “valleys” or are using a more brittle film such as polyester, you can have spots where the film does not adhere resulting in bubbles.

To counter this effect, try the following steps.  First try increasing your pressure by going to the next lower nip setting on your laminator.  If that does not do the trick, try running your pvc ‘across the grain’.  If you look at your pvc, you will notice faint lines or streaks in the pvc.  These represent the machine direction in which the pvc was extruded.  What you want is to insert your pvc into the laminator with those lines parellel to the rollers.  The rollers will follow the high and low spots and help make sure even pressure is mainatined while you are laminating pvc.

When laminating pvc, we recommend using cold or pressure sensitive films.  You can use heat adhesives but make sure you keep the effective temperature on the pvc below 200 degrees Farenheit.

If you have experienced small spots in your laminates or have had prints wrinkle when mounting, the problem may be too much pressure.  This may be true because the boards are slightly thicker (common in the summer) or the roller gap has changed.  What happens is the extra pressure will cause your print to raise just before the rollers and the laminate film will stick to your print before being pressed down by the rollers.  This premature adhesision can be uneven causing air pockets or spots (sometimes called silvering).  Excessive pressure will cause wrinkles.

To eliminate this, either set the gap for the rollers to the next size up (if you are running 3/16″ thick board, try the 1/4″ setting.  If you do that and you do not have enough pressure for good lamination, hold onto to your print at the corners (once the rollers have grabbed your print and keep your print taught and not raised before the rollers.

Today as gas prices go to $3.30 a gallon and beyond, the cost of shipping is going up also.  Freight surcharges on our truck shipments are now at 20%.  Whether I think its fair or not (and you can probably tell I think the surcharges are high because while fuel is up, the cost of their trucks, terminal and people have not gone up), all the carriers are doing it.  We have taken a lot of efforts in the past year to bring the cost of shipping down to remain competitive and we have been pretty successful at doing so.

The steps we have taken include using deferred and consolidated services, identifying carriers which specialize in either a location or type of service, increasing our pruchase levels to gain free shipping, and just plain old negotiation.  Being small, our leverage may not seem to be great, but if you can educate yourself you can find a good amount to save.  And freight is imporatnt, after materials and salaries, it is our third largest expense category.

There are freight consolidators who pick up freight locally and take it to another trucking company (interline service) in another part of the US for delivery.  They like to have full skids (that is skids which are 6-7 feet high) and for those type of shipments, they are 15 to 20 percent less expensive than traditional long-haul carriers.  For minimum type shipments (i.e. under 200 pounds) the shipping consolidator will not save us money.

We also have the opportunity to use carriers who like to go to a specific region.  This includes firms who specialize in going to New York City or we have a similar arrangement with a firm who goes to the Carolinas. 

Deferred services usually add 2-3 days to the transit time.  In return, you can save 30% of the shipping charge.  This is available for cross country shipping.  What we have done on shipments accross the country is to expedite our shipping of those orders so that we can use deferred shipping and the product arrives at our customer with our usual leadtime.

We have negotiated standardized freight programs (known as FAKs) and tried to minimize special charges such as single pickups, government and elevated tailgate services.  We tend to focus on those services  we experience a demand for and negotiate to have all of carriers standardize on the fees they charge for those sevrices.

Finally, there is just plain old negotiating for discounts.  We talked with some big people to see what they got and while we coldn’t expect to match everything, it gave us some good benchmarks. 

It’s all about being as efficient and lowest cost as you can be.  So while we have made shipping a little more complex, we have reduced our shipping costs 15 to 20 percent from a year ago which helps us hold our prices steady.  I did not think we were doing a bad job, but there was significant room for improvement (and I am sure there are other savings opportunities too). 

While we are in the sign and display business, shipping charges can often be over 20% of an invoice.  So while we face competitors who want to add a fuel surcharge or raise  minimum orders, we have been able to hold the line and keep the total delivered cost in line.   And the improvement helps us to be more competitive and grow our business.

A majority of our fabrication activity revolves around graphic mounting boards.  The number one reject we face in our qc process is the bowing of boards.  We need to keep these boards as flat as possible so that our customers get the flattest results - because after all, that is why they adhere a print to a board - to keep it nice and flat.  Once a foam board becomes bowed or cups, it is almost impossible to flatten it out. 

The boards we use include foam boards, Gator boards, SBS boards and more.  The boards we receive are mostly larger boards such as 4 by 8 feet and we coat adhesive and cut these into print sizes.  Many things can contribute to bowing, but by far, the number 1 contributor to the bowing of boards is how they are stored.   Also now as summer approaches, the humidity is also changing and the absorption of moisture into the boards also effects the bowing of the boards.  And if you do not store boards properly, the humidity and dampness of summer will be excentuated.

So we do three things to keep our boards stored safe and flat and you can do the same in your operation.  The 3 key things we do are:

• Store Mounting Boards horizontal or flat
• Keep boards in their carton
• Keep boards up off the floor

We have 10 foot racks which allows us to store our boards on shelves.  This accomplishes 2 things - First it gets them off our concrete floor and second by not leaning the boards vertically, we minimize any stress that could lead to a cupping or bowing of the board.  The concrete floor tends to be cooler and help moisture from humidity condense and be absorped easier. 

Keeping the boards in their cardboard box helps to keep the humidity away from the board as it is absorped by the cardboard.  The carton also acts as a buffer to keep the conditions cosistent for the boards.

If you can do these 3 things, you will keep your boards flat and as they have an indefinite shelf life, you can store them that way for years without any problems.