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newbie with a Pre-masking question.

Hello everyone,

I'll just tell you a little about myself before I jump right in with a question. I work on a dirt stock car racing team in wyoming and we've been installing vinyl on the cars for years but we just recently got into making our own graphics for the cars.

So far everything we've cut has turned out great but we ran into problems when we started trying to pre-mask the large graphics. We end up with wrinkles and bubbles and it was a real pain in the you know what. I've started researching different pre-masking systems but being new to this we don't want to dump a bunch of money into something and later realize it doesn't work or we could have done it much cheaper.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
T.R.:unclesam:
 

mladams7259

New Member
Welcome aboard.

A solution to your problem is very simple! THE BIG SQUEEGEE!!!

http://www.bigsqueegee.com/

The members here will vouch for this excellent product!!

I use it daily for masking and its excellent! Its a necessity in my shop!

There is also another member here who makes app tape holder that are great too!

His website is

http://www.henrygoines.com/


Hope this helps.

ONE MORE THING- PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!!!!!!!
 

Replicator

New Member
Welcome T.R. . . . It's really just about technique, and patients to learn a method that works for you.

You shouldn't have to spend any money to mask, just slow down and maybe waste a little masking material,

Drag your mask out full length down the table, I'm assuming you have a roller,
trying some masking on the table only with no vinyl, practice nice even angled strokes from the center out, up and down.

Good Luck !
 

blade

New Member
wow...that bigsqueegee looks like a sweet tool. gonna have to get myself one of those.
fing02.gif
 

gvgraphics

New Member
Welcome aboard.

A solution to your problem is very simple! THE BIG SQUEEGEE!!!

http://www.bigsqueegee.com/

The members here will vouch for this excellent product!!

I use it daily for masking and its excellent! Its a necessity in my shop!

There is also another member here who makes app tape holder that are great too!

His website is

http://www.henrygoines.com/


Hope this helps.

ONE MORE THING- PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!!!!!!!

I agree! Plus you get a discount on it if you use the ad's on this site to get to his order page.
 

imaSIGNr

New Member
You can also make a very inexpensive roll holder to mount onto your table to use while applying your mask to the vinyl. This apparatus is very essential if you're doing large/wide pieces of pre mask. If you're getting air bubbles between your pre mask and vinyl, you'll just transfer that to your substrate.
There are several post on this issue here in the archives
 

Sign Works

New Member
Also the brand of application tape can play a part in successful masking. Main Tape Perfectear is cheap but can be a real pain on masking large graphics. I prefer TransferRite, it allows me to lift it back up before squeeging to elliminate wrinkles as to where the Main Tape is much less forgiving (higher tack level when it touches the vinyl). Also the clear application tapes can be a total pain, I only use them when absoloutly necessary.
 

WVB

New Member
I use The Sheeter myself and love it..! We run R-tape paper tapes as well as At-42 Clear without issues... I have never ran AT-60 Ulta clear through it as I hardly use it anymore, but The Sheeter is great and an incredible time saver for sure...
 
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