How to Avoid Overstretch on Smaller Side of Door Handle with Vehicle Wraps

When installers are wrapping door handle, it is very common that they would easily overstretch the vehicle wrap film on the smaller part of the door handle, which can be really frustrating. But why is it so easy to overstretch even if installers apply with the same way to the bigger part of the handle – and it works totally fine there? Is there a way to avoid this?

It is mostly because the smaller part is too short so that tension can build up in vehicle wrap film on that section very easily. But speaking of a solution, of course, there is one or two. A handy way to avoid this happening is to use a combining set of skills, including triangles technique, cold pre-stretch logic, and relief cut. This is very helpful, especially for color change vehicle wrap film.

The cold pre-stretch is generally for the front side of the door handle, where wrapper would hook the front area and pull the vehicle wrap film towards the back hard (around 10% stretch). However, even though the installer pulls hard when the material reaches the back of the handle, the stretch is not 10% anymore. Instead, it goes down to four to five percent.

Thus, there is minimum tension even though no squeegeeing has been done yet. And there would not be much failure point on this bigger side of the handle and the break in between the bigger part and smaller part.

But if wrappers stretch the vehicle wrap film the same way on the smaller part of the handle, lots of fingers will show up there: Hook it and hold it hard with the same tension as you would do on the bigger piece.

For this smaller part, it is a different story. Although smaller seems not as tricky, an installer is going to build up a lot of fingers when wrapping it because there is no need to wrap around the scoop on the backside of the handle. Also, the stretch fading from 10% to four-five percent is not going to work on this part because it is so short – and there is tension.

Thus, part of the solution to avoid mistakes on the smaller part of a door handle is to stretch about a fifth less than you would do with your vehicle wrap film to the bigger part to keep the tension from building up.

The next step to the solution on avoiding overstretch is to combine cold pre-stretch technique and relief cut so that wrappers can minimize the tension there. Instead of pull very hard on this part, an installer can give it a bit of a shimmy, just enough to create a beautiful glass at the top of the handle there with minimum tension. But in this case, more tension is going to build up at the front section of the handle.

So to avoid the tension building back up towards the front, make a relief cut there, shift the material back with the triangle technique towards the back, and the tension will be shifted back towards the upper section corner. Also, this helps even out the tension instead of letting it build up in one particular spot.

There is still tension building up at the bottom corner section. So use the triangle technique to shift the material away – but do not use heat here just yet. Then, use the hard side of the squeegee to even out the wrinkles there.

Now you can use cold pre-stretch logic. Heat the material, shrink it, and take the tension right to the edge. There can be quite a lot of tension there still. If this is the case, heat it with your heat gun one more time and keep the tension at the minimum point.

It is always important to let the adhesive flow to ensure long term durability. So do not underestimate the heating process here. As long as it is well done, the vehicle wrap film is going to hold very well on the handle section there.

Once the material is cool, click the blade and make sure it is sharp enough, then cut the excess film away as usual, and seal the edge. There you will have your perfect door handle with the vehicle wrap film.