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Archive 2015 · anybody do their own acrylic mounting?

  
 
coops75
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · anybody do their own acrylic mounting?


Saw a few youtube videos on mounting prints to acrylic and thought it might be worth a go, but unsure of what acrylic works best and where to purchase it. Looks like a manual laminator would work ok. Would really appreciate any input/advice from those of you who do this.

Cheers



Jan 06, 2015 at 09:52 AM
jkashinsky
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · anybody do their own acrylic mounting?


I have a friend who does it. He does use a manual laminator.

Trapped dust will be your biggest problem. He has an air compressor with some anti static device on it that helps a lot but not completely.



Jan 06, 2015 at 10:09 AM
Snead
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · anybody do their own acrylic mounting?


I've mounted photos on acrylic with a dry mount press. It will stand the heat if you don't overdue it. It's difficult to cut. A scratch and snap is recommended for cutting but I didn't have much success with that method. I have done a lot of stain glass work so I have no problem cutting glass with that method but i wound up using a very fine tooth saw blade on a table saw and then polishing the edges. A lot of work!

The finished work is displayed on a stand. I use the same type of stand for mounting photos on thin plywood which I think looks better.



Jan 06, 2015 at 10:22 AM
coops75
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · anybody do their own acrylic mounting?


Thanks for the responses. Dust looks like being a problem. I will use a cold laminator which is really just a roller. Found lots of good resourses since starting the post and think I may give it a whirl in Feb. I would like to put the acrylic in a metal frame rather than without. Don't much like the look with the brass bolts in each corner. Had some 20x30 metal prints put into a black metal frame and they look really nice.


Jan 06, 2015 at 08:13 PM
Alex Nail
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · anybody do their own acrylic mounting?


My experience mounting to dibond and laminating taught me that:

Dust is a massive issue at all times. You need an absolutely clean room. Washing your face, wearing gloves/a hairnet also helps.

The substrate must be totally flat before rolling. The slightest warps in some of our dibond resulted in prints with lines of bubbles. It took us a long time to figure out what was happening!



Jan 07, 2015 at 04:16 AM
coops75
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · anybody do their own acrylic mounting?


Thanks Alex. The videos I have seen showed the face of the print is laminated directly onto the acrylic. Are you saying that once this has been done and the back end of the print is mounted to say Dibond or Sintra, that the print can still show bubbles if the backing is not flat? Seems that from a technical point of view its quite simple until large prints are mounted, which may require two people. The dust issue makes me a little nervous. The number of times I have mounted matted prints into glass frames only to see a tiny hair or speck of dust make its way to the matt or print surface. Ay least that is reversible.


Jan 07, 2015 at 08:37 AM
Alex Nail
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · anybody do their own acrylic mounting?


The face of the print is mounted directly onto the acryllic either by putting the 'double sided tape' laminate onto the acryllic first or onto the print first. In either method at some point you are laminating something sticky onto the acryllic. If you imagine putting a severly bent peice of acrllic through the rollers to mount the adhesive to then there will be uneven pressure applied by the rollers. This introduces a line of bubbles. You will see this even if the acryllic is slightly bent. You need your acryllic to be as flat as possible or thin enough to bend!


Jan 07, 2015 at 11:17 AM





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