Laminate your adhesive backed vinyl laminate before mounting
Recently we helped a customer mount and laminate a graphic printed on adhesive backed vinyl. We do not usually do this but as they only had a 40 inch laminator and the print was 50 inches wide, we helped them out. Normally we mount all of our prints first and then over-laminate them. The reason for this is that it is usually a lot easier to over-laminate second as the print is supported by the board and gives a more uniform pressure.
When we mount a print, we flip the print back over the main rolls after attaching the leading edge. We the hold the print firmly against the roll to keep it smooth across the roll. When we did this with a graphic printed on vinyl, we found that with only slight pressure, we could stretch the vinyl film and distort the image. The good thing was that we noticed the stretching on the white film and not in the image. To mount successfully, we ran very slowly and with two people holding the image lightly, we got it done. But we could have made it 10 times easier and less stressful had we laminated the print first.
With the print laminated, we could have pulled it up if we were having any problems (but we couldn’t our way because we would have stretched and distorted the print) and the job could have been done with one instead of three people. Also after the fact we laminated a print on a sled with a 2 mil cast vinyl laminate and it was a very forgiving film and easy to do.
So while we still linke mounting photos and paper prints first, our new rule is that when working with adhesive backed vinyl, over-laminate it first and that will keep waste to a minimum and make it easier to do.