Often time, the business owner thinks about how to save as much expend as possible, so there are times when a single wrapper has to wrap a huge section like a bumper. Or there are times when there is just no extra hand available and an installer has to do it by themselves. No worries! In this article, we will be introducing a trick where we use the liner of the material to create a bumper pole when wrapping the bumper, which is a great way to learn especially for solo vehicle wrapping.
First of all, before we do any actual vehicle wrapping, take the bumper piece and roll it up on our work table. Let’s try to roll it as tight as possible, which is extremely crucial to this technique. Once it is set, we can then go to the vehicle.
However, instead of starting in the middle of the bumper and working out towards the side like what installers would generally do – the fairly standard way, we are going to release a bit of the liner here and start from the fender side of the bumper. As we roll out the material, the idea is to keep the tube, which is created by the liner, as tight as possible so that it can act as a bumper pole here.
With the pole being set up, we are still working from the middle out towards the side, but with this rolled-up style of vehicle wrapping, we are starting from the side, then working towards the other side straight away. Next, we can get our heat gun prepared.
We are standing on the other side and holding the material up - we are hooking the corner by starting on the hardest part of the bumper first. And we can relax the material with heat in this way. Just holding the film up and create a triangle shape. We can see the angles of the wrinkles on the material right now, which are towards the middle. This is why we use heat to relax it.
The “bumper pole” at this moment is acting like an extra hand, and it is great to allow us to sort of spread the material out as the main corner on the side is hooked and set already. Right now we can focus on the side. And the priority at this moment is to relax the material that has wrinkles pointing right into the center. Now with one hand applying heat and the other with the rolled-up tube, we can see the wrinkles are kind of being held out.
Once the material is relaxed, pull the film down the way to the bottom, then pull from the other side up the way to the top. This will help spread the tension out in the middle.
By having this pole, we do not have too much excess material that would pick up a lot of dirt from the floor. So the surface stays clean. This is such a methodical process to work on. And there is also one tip for doing this: To have the vehicle on a raised platform. In this way, we are able to have extra space to relax the material.
At this point, we are still keeping the liner without cutting it off. It is just kind of sneaking behind and going off to the side. There are still wrinkles pointing to the middle. But pole is extremely helpful here. If there is an extra installer, he would have held the side and create triangles in the tension. With the tube, a single installer is good to go. So this is a way of not hiring anyone else, and saving some money as well as time.
When everything is done, do not forget to relax the material also on the edges, which is using the cold pre-stretch logic – because we did stretch on the edges, so we have to go back and relax it at the base.
Generally speaking, we are always going to have a pole type of shape to roll the material up pretty tight with this technique. But using the liner is the most convenient way. And with this tube, we can create 100% glass on the main surface. Thus, it is not only quick and straight forward, but also a great technique to go with.
