Difficulty in laminating with Sintra
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.