There are times when installers working on vehicle wrapping projects where the backing paper is not that good, especially when with budget film, which it tears from behind as they try to pull it away in the middle of wrapping, and might even leaves specks there.
That is totally not funny at all. It is not just giving you troubles with the install, but also slowing down the whole process.
Let’s say wrapper is wrapping in the usual way. First at all, apply the material on the surface and pull a bit of backing paper out in order to hold it there. Just set the hinge on the top, then cut the backing paper with snitty straight across the vehicle wrap.
These are all the normal technique installer uses for vehicle wrapping. The third step is to start squeegeeing from the middle to the left or right, and the other side to work out. It is all about working from a temporary hinge to a permanent one until the material is well set.
The next thing is to grab the liner that is sort of folded behind and pull it straight away, sometimes in order to get rid of things like wrinkles. However, with vehicle wrap that does not have good enough quality (or the backing paper it has), the liner can be sensitive and easy to tear.
Because the installer cut straight across with the snitty, the backing paper is now torn, or sometimes even tearing continuously, even though the technique wrapper used here has no problems at all.
When situation like this happen (or when wrappers foreseen it happen), installers probably cannot take charge to say “Let’s wrap with something super high quality”, because there would be time when clients want to do with budget film – and often time the quality of backing paper might frustrate you a lot.
So then, how to avoid backing paper tearing when cutting? Cutting the liner in a half moon shape is worth a shot.
Here is how wrappers can set up:
Apply the vehicle wrap on the surface and set it, pull the material down a little bit. Set a hinge there, and cut the liner off in a half moon shape. Pick up the circle of the backing paper after the cutting, fold it, slide it behind, and use your squeegee to squeeze it, just make sure it is tight enough behind the vehicle wrap film and flush to the edge of the vehicle wrap film now.
That is because when cutting straight across with snitty, the liner stays pretty flush and flat there, but for half moon shape cutting, wrappers have to really slide the circle behind and make sure it is absolutely tight there, otherwise it can cause the graphic to peak up.
But now, without having to pick up the whole panel, making the whole thing complicated, and even having the backing paper tear when you pull, wrappers are able to pull up the liner evenly, because there is this half moon tab sitting underneath right now.
There is no more chance to make bad snitty cut there – If you were to think about using knife for replacement, this would be a big no-no, because the chance of cutting the paint is going to be really high in this case.
So just cut the liner in a half moon shape, slide the circle behind, squeeze it to make sure it is pretty tight enough – Installers can use their thumb to go over it from left to right after using your squeegee to squeeze as well.
Once this is set, finally it is time for squeegee (on the panel). Basically, the install technique has not changed at all. So just start straight forward with squeegee working right in the middle as you would do usually.
What we change here is just the way we cut off the liner. But others remain the same: Working from temporary hinge to the permanent one. Set it, create a smooth flow after the liner cutting, then work it through and cut away the excess film as usual. There you will have a nice and clean finish.
