Laminating Tips: Silvering
December 30th 2019
Have you ever seen silvery specs in a laminated print? This defect is called silvering. It’s caused when tiny air bubbles are captured between the adhesive on an overlaminating film and the surface of a print. Silvering is generally most noticeable in the dark shadow areas of a print.
Possible reasons for silvering occurrence based on our experiences are as follow:
- Insufficient roller pressure – Improper downward pressure between the laminator rollers and uneven roller set up (Low cost, hand crank laminators) often cause silvering.
- Laminating speed too high –Lowering the laminator speed allows for more time for pressure to be applied to the laminate, thus sealing the air bubbles on the print.
- Thinner adhesive coat weight –A thicker adhesive coat weight can fill in the area between the print and the overlaminate.
- Hard adhesive –A softer adhesive can also fill in more of the area between the print and the overlaminate.
One tip that we can share to avoid it is regarding the drying time. Laminating a printout before it is completely dry can cause bubbles to trapped between the media and overlaminate. To overcome this problem, it is necessary to provide enough drying time for at least 24 hours or more before the lamination process is carried out in order for the printed output to be more optimal. The use of products that are of good quality from trusted distributors can also minimize the deviation result of the printouts.
Related to the adhesive layer, the formulation of laminated products has an important role to produce a good appearance and minimize silvering. One of our products, PROLAM, a general purpose lamination film, have been formulated with standard adhesives that are in accordance with the quality specified by Multi Viscomindo. You can choose from the standard version of PROLAM V80, or PROLAM V70 for the economical version.
References:
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