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.

A couple of months ago, we wrote about mounting and laminating giclee or fine art digital prints.  Working with customers we have now launched our range of acid free films.  The toughest part was not the acid free but also getting non-yellowing adhesives with hi tack components.  Like all things, these cost more, but right now we have a robust group of 3-4 customers who like having these and we have sized them for their printers to get sales going.  The products are now listed on our website and have a separate product grouping for the acod free pressure sensitive films.

We are also looking at new adhesives which have a textured release liner to make grooves in the adhesive to help air escape.  This helps eliminate bubbles in mounts from trapped air, especially common with hand applied graphic mounts.  The films we are evaluating are silicon top coated polyesters which can be self-wound as cold over-laminates.  Eliminating the release liner not only makes the laminates easier to use, but is more environmentally friendly and eliminates the silicon paper waste people now face.

Like a lot of people, the first time I saw products we use that were being made in China, I was bowled over by their prices.  Many of these items were 40% of the cost we have been paying and certainly when we looked at these at tradeshows, they looked good, worked well and were not poorly made.  So following the herd (I never said I was an original thinker!), we have been trying to import directly and have found the original promise to be less than we thought although still an option for certian items.

First of all, our costs rapidly rose.  As a small company, we found that on our purchases of less than $10K, shipping, duty and clearance fees were approaching 25%.  Plus what we found was that with the time to get products here being 45 to 60 days from when we ordered (and paid), we had to have 2 orders going at a time (staged 30 days apart) to have product arriving every month because we didn’t have the space to hold 4 months inventory.  And finally, we inspected every unit and for those that had any damage or needed rework, the Chinese are good at sending parts but the rework and repackaging is all on us. Not including the management time to control the importing, the landed costs rose and the savings became about 30% instead of the 60% originally thought. 

The ongoing support for imported goods, tech support and alike, is all on us.  Not that that’s a problem, but we do have some challenges with component changes from lot to lot and communication always takes a couple of days and is sometimes problematic. So when you factor everything in, importing is a an opportunity, but not the ‘no brainer’ the herd makes it out to be.

What this means is that YOU NEED SCALE and you need to to provide all of the resources to make it work.  Not only economically, but also to get the Chinese’ attention to correct issues on a timely basis.  This requires working directly with the Chinese  For certain items, we have stayed with our US sources and what we have done to bridge the gap with other items is partner with others to combine bringing these items in, have additional people we can network with on Technical issues, and make it so we can maintain sevice levels.  This has diminished some of the financial luster these originally had, but gives us a sustainable position which we can service and grow our business.

In the past couple of months, I have written about the challenges of higher energy costs, longer lead times and the challenges that poses to a small company.  In addition to the passion we have for our products, we go through our financials pretty rigorously to make sure that costs are not moving in the wrong direction (and like the salt shaker on my kitchen table, we always have to scale back spending on a couple of items to get them back to the ‘center’ of the table!)  Even though business has been good, with $4 gas we are expecting the ’shoe to drop’ and business to slow down.  Increasingly, we are looking for ways to automate and to outsource actions to limit the growth of staff to both protect our downside as well as handle additional sales while maintaining our overhead costs.

 Right now, we are looking at automated cutters with computerized stops, new software and updated computers.  The technology which is available is affordable and can have a meaningful impact on productivity as well as help to give better service and make better products.  It also takes time to evaluate and implement which takes time away from product development and being with customers, but right now we feel an urgency to focus on these internal improvements to protect us against downturns as well as give us capacity for future growth.

I would be interested in how others look at their business right now and what steps you are taking for the future.

Business has been holding steady and is off to a pretty good start in 2007.  Given everything you hear on TV about interest rates, China, oil, and more I am pretty happy with how things are.  Not relaxed, but happy.  What keeps us from relaxing is higher cost pressures and longer lead times.  Keeping an eye on these and planning will be critical to both keeping customers happy, costs in line and profitability.

What we do see in our business is lengthening lead times to get products, still some upward pressure on costs and manufacturers looking for longer runs and therefore larger orders.  Our leadtimes have moved out a couple of weeks on average from about 10 days to over 3 weeks for our basic materials we fabricate.  While it is due to a number of understandable factors, the industry does not always have the mechanisms in place to communicate the changes in longer supply times.  As you move closer to the end user of the product, this compresses the time we all have to turn items around to meet the promise dates we all have.  We can not ask customers to stock more as they do not have the space or are seeing the same economic predictions we see.  For us, more inventory is a quick fix for this (but it takes time to build it up because you are playing catch-up) or doing more fabricating (cutting and adhesive coating in our case) and of coarse all this costs more.  We do see competitors who do not have items in stock and their customers call us for supply, our challenge is to make these customers permanent, have supply for them and our current custmers.  It is a balancing act and sometimes it’s tough to keep your balance.

Costs, notable electricity and fuel continue to climb like a rocket.  Even with oil down from $75 to $60 a barrel, our energy costs have gone up more than 40% from 2006 and they do not seem to be headed down.  After an inital spike of price increases at the end of last year, we are seeing folks try for another round of increases now, but they are not sticking as well as last fall and are not as aggressive yet.  Companies are increasing the orders required for shipping to keep costs in line but eventually we see increasing costs for raw materials. 

Whether its bigger shipments, higher costs, doing more or whatever, the pressure on costs and prices is coming.  The fact the economy stays strong certainly helps with dealing with these pressures.  The choices, while not always pleasant, are not the difficult ones we have all faced in the past.  It’s just important to stay on top of things and make the best decisions to insure service levels and to meet our commitments.

Anybody who ships fragile items via UPS, knows of the monster who lives in their automatic conveyor sorting system.  We believe that the monster has a particular fondness for foam board products and waits for our large boxes to take a bite out of them.  Anyone who has had damaged shipments from the monster knows UPS covers for him (or her) with an almost automatic email titled “insufficient packaging” anytime you make a complaint.  I am sure that Fedex, DHL and others all have similar situations and damaged boxes are not infrequent. 

What we have done is purchase overpack sleeves for may of our foam board box sizes.  We do run into the “oversized limitations” on some of our bigger boxes of foam boards and for those we have changed all of those boxes to double-walled stronger test corrugated board.  For the moment, the monster seems to be tame but I am sure he will make a return from time to time.  As you can tell, our changes may have not been the least costly to make, but first of all we needed to reduce shipping damage significantly.  I am not so sanguine to believe that we have tamed the monster forever, but we will always be on the lookout for better ways to package products.  Any other ideas on this will be read with great interest. 

We are getting a lot of inquiries for how to mount (and less so overlaminate) fine art or giclee prints in roll laminators.  The major needs as we have been told are for the adhesives to be acid free, non-yellowing and last at least 50+ years.  We have found cold or pressure sensitive adhesives to be the best choice as the thicker papers make heat activated adhesives more difficult in a roller press (dry mount adhesive in a press would be easier and archival dry mount adhesives are available).  We have identified acid free acrylic adhesives and are testing them now.  While they seem fine to us initially, any experience others have had would be appreciated.