Facemount Optically Clear Mounting Adhesive

In this video, I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about Facemount, often referred to as second surface mounts, acrylic mounts, or perspex mounts. Take a look at what Facemount really is. Facemount is actually an optically clear mounting adhesive from DRYTAC. It allows you a way to create awesome and stunning ways to display your digital prints and your photographs. Hi, I'm Dave Goetter and welcome to my studio lab. For the last 25 years, I've been educating companies and thousands of individuals on how to produce and sell large format. What my favorite passion is actually teaching. That's what we're going to do in this video when it comes to Facemount. We're going to cover all of the materials that are necessary, what to do, and most importantly, what not to do. So let's get busy and have a little fun while we're doing it. Materials matter and it's very important that your print media have an absolutely flat surface with no unevenness. I recommend working with a high quality film base or photo base media. Low cost medias will only result in silvering due to uneven surface keeping it from making the contact with the adhesive. Here's an example of what silvering looks like up close. No, these are not stars in the background. This is the light reflecting off of thousands of tiny little bubbles resulting in silvering. Next I want to cover some of the unique properties about Facemount. To do this, we'll have to take it apart. I've got a small sample on the table here and I'm going to peel the release liner off of one side. I've got a small piece of acrylic here that's going to help me how peeling off the release liner on the other side. This way we can actually see the optically clear carrier that's in between the optically clear adhesive on both sides of the Facemount making it crystal clear. In fact, Facemount is actually manufactured in a clean room and it's available up to 72" wide. The last material I want to cover is actually polymethyl methacrylate better known as acrylic. Acrylic is manufactured by a number of different companies under specific name brands. You may have heard of them like Plexiglas, Perspex, LuciteLux, and Optix. It's important to know that each of these brands has multiple formulations depending on their intended use from general purpose to framing, even certain acrylics that are specifically designed for doing Facemount. There are a couple of other things that are important to know about acrylic like it's manufactured with three different processes from continuous cast to cell cast to extruded. And obviously, it comes with a wide variety of surface protection films from plastic to paper. Now when you're ordering your acrylic sheet, make sure to specify a frame grade extruded sheet. This way, you're going to get the most uniform sheet thickness. And that's important when you're doing a Facemount. Well let's take a look at how to hand cut some thin acrylic on our tabletop. The two items we'll need is a nice straight edge with a nonslip pad. That way, when we start using our acrylic scoring knife, our straight edge won't slip on us. Let's take a close up look at how the acrylic scoring knife actually works: kind of like two knives in one. The leading edge here is what you use to cut through the paper release liner whereas the hook part here is actually what you're going to use to cut a V groove or to score into the acrylic sheet. So in the first pass, I want to use the knife part to cut through the paper premask. And then on the return stroke, I'll actually use the hook part to cut the V groove. Use light pressure when you cut your V groove and you'll need to make multiple passes depending on how thick your acrylic sheet it. And it's a good idea to make sure that you hang your acrylic off the edge of the table so that you won't gouge into your table. Start with light pressure and build up making multiple passes. On this sheet of 3 millimeter, I'll make about six light passes. After scoring your acrylic, rotate the acrylic so that the score line that you created is lined up on the edge of your table. Now I could easily break this now like this. However, this is a higher pressure point and I want to distribute the weight more evenly and more uniform across this breakpoint here. Using my straight edge, it's going to allow me to get more uniform pressure and a cleaner break. Once you break your acrylic, you can now use your knife to cut your premask groove. For cutting thicker and larger sheets of acrylic, I like to use my multi-material cutter. Now I've already changed the blade for cutting acrylic and it works pretty much like the one we had on our table. And the first pass will cut through the premask. And every pass thereafter will be scoring our V groove. Now one of the things that I want to point out is you can use the cutting tool to break the sheet right here, but I prefer to do that on the table because we'll get a cleaner break. Well let's take a look at cutting some acrylic with a skill saw and we'll need to do this in the back of the facility away from the laminator, and then we'll dive into polishing and finishing the edge. Now if you're fortunate enough to have a local supplier that can cut the acrylic for you, that's great. But they may not do edge polishing. So pay close attention. It's easier than you think. Always remember to wear safety glasses when you're working with power equipment. Now here's a tip. On the bottom of the circular saw, I placed the loop part of Velcro on the bottom to keep from scratching the acrylic surface. And I've got my straight edge here lined up and clamped down. After you cut your acrylic with the circular saw, you'll be left with a rough cut edge like this. And what we want to do is work to a more polished edge like this. And there are couple of ways to remover this rough cut. One of the easiest is to actually use the table router. Turning out rough saw cut into a nice smooth edge. If you don't have a table router, it's okay. We can do this old school. I've got a sanding pad that I've made with 320 on one side, 180 on the other. I'll do half of this edge here starting with the 320. Once I've removed the deep grooves, I'll change over to my 180. To help see what I'm doing, I'll take a damp rag and wipe up the sawdust. This makes it work a lot cleaner and a lot easier. My favorite way to finish off rough saw edges is use my acrylic scoring knife like we used earlier. I've sharpened the edge here and I'm actually going to use it as a scraping tool, working all the way across the sheet making sure that I stay parallel, changing the angle from time to time each time I draw the scraper. What I like about this is I don't end up with a lot of sawdust but more like some shavings. And it's a lot faster than sanding. Now we're ready to flame polish the edge of our acrylic sheet. A couple of things we need to pay attention to: #1 is make sure you've removed any sawdust that's on the edge of the sheet here and make sure you removed enough of your film or your paper base premask to keep it away from the flame edge. Let's use some common sense. I'm going to use some MAPP gas and actually flame the edge to bring out a polished. Now we have a beautiful pristine highly polished edge. Before we start our Facemount, I'll need some images to work with and I've printed some off from my roll in DS-540i. It's configured with silver metallic ink. And these prints are absolutely stunning to look at. So if you're going to do a face mount where your image is going to be flesh to the edges, you want to set the print up so that you have a quarter inch bleed all the way around. I'll take my acrylic sheet, place it on top of the image so that you can see this quarter inch bleed all the way around the image or about 6 millimeters. If you have a client that brings you a print that's actual size or you print one that's actual size, you may want to consider doing what's called a float mount.

In our first example of a facemount, I’m actually going to be working with a sled. The sled’s a tool that you use if you want to do small images and you’re not interested in webbing up the laminator or you want to over laminate just one side of an image. To create my sled, I use a piece of 3mm or 1/8 thick acrylic. I’ve covered the entire sheet with a mounting adhesive and I left a release slider in place. This is going to provide a nonstick surface which is very important when you’re working with a sled. One unique point is I’ve actually stripped back 1” both the release slider and the mounting adhesive to expose the clear acrylic here on the leading edge. This is going to be really helpful as we move forward. Our first step is attach the face mount to the sled on this leading edge that will process through the laminator. To create a hinge like this, the is normally done by taking a small piece of tape and attaching it to the upper release liner and separating it from the facemount adhesive. This is sticky, this is not. Next, most people will work this leading edge all the way across and turn the sheet over. However, this is a little bit difficult for some people and I’d like to show you an easier way. The easiest way to create a hinge with facemount on a sled is to leave that 1” area of exposed acrylic. Put a little air underneath your facemount and slide it up till it meets that 1” strip. Now I normally use some clear heavy duty packing tape but for the video, I’m going to use some brown because it’s going to be easier to see. Tape your tape past the board. Line it up on the other side. Put a little tension in this weight. Rub it down with your thumb. I’m going to use a paint scraper and actually just cut the tape off. And I’m leaving it about a half inch beyond the facemount. I’ll take my squeegee and rub this down and I’ll flip the sheet over. Take my squeegee, rub it down one more time. Now I have a piece of grey electrical tape that I’m actually going to attach to the release liner. And with just a little gentle pull, I’m actually going to lift up and I’ll feel to make sure that I’m just pulling off the release liner. And with a nice even pull all the way across, we can separate the release liner. I’ll turn my tape over and tape it down. Push the facemount back on to the sled and we’re ready to go to the laminator. Before we pass our sled to the JM 63 to apply our facemount or image, there’s a couple of things we’ll need to do. Clean our rollers off and go over a couple of settings. I’ve got the machine powered on and I’ve got the heat set to 109 degrees Fahrenheit. This is about 42, 43 degrees Celsius. I’ve got the laminator set to a forward mode and a comfortable speed set. Now let’s take a look at an easy way to clean off our rollers. I’m going to use a DRS Roller and the adhesive tacky pad to get any dirt or dust that’s on the rollers. I’ll simply spin the top roller and move the DRS Roller across from the left to the right. I’ll cut to an up close shot so you can actually see the particles being picked up by the roller. And then I’ll just transfer them to the adhesive tacky pad. I’ve set a gap the distance between the top roller and the bottom roller to 3mm which corresponds to the thickness of our sled. I’m going to take the leading edge and place it into the rollers, and then I’m going to use the foot switch to drive the sled into the laminator and I‘ll stop just past the hinge point here. Our next step is pretty straightforward. We need to take our facemount and pass it over the top main roller. But we want to make sure that we get a nice tight wrap. Failure to do so can end up with bubbles in the leading edge of your digital print. I’d like to take this moment to tell you that if you have a print that’s really long, it’s a nice idea to take your facemount and wrap it around a 3” plastic tube. This gives you an incredible way to control a wide web of film and it makes easier to pass it over the roller and you won’t kink your film. So what I’m going to do is actually pull back and up to get a nice tight wrap, and then I can pull my tube out. The next thing I want to do is I want to pass the facemount underneath the idler here and that’s because I’m actually going to use this tube as my wind up attaching my electrical tape to the tube. So when we start to process this board through the laminator, this will actually wind up and separate our release liner. Cleaning up your digital print or your photograph before you do a facemount is absolutely critical. Any small dirt or dust or particles on the sheet will only be amplified when you do a facemount. I like to take my flashlight and run it across my image like this. This will cast shadows on any small dust particles that are on the sheet making them far easier to see. Here’s what that looks like up close. Now some people will actually use air to blow off the image. And I got to tell you I’m not interested in moving the dust from here to there or creating a dust storm. Some people will actually use a microfiber cloth and clean off the image like this. Unfortunately if there’s any dust or dirt underneath your microfiber cloth, you can actually scratch the image. And chances are you’re just moving the dirt or dust from here to here. The best way to clean off your digital print is to use a DRS Roller. Go from the bottom to the top. Use overlapping strokes. Make sure not to touch your digital print with your fingers. Doing so will only make them show up after a period of time. With our print clean, we can place it onto our sled and we can now process it through the laminator. I’m going to hold down the leading edge and use the foot switch to start the leading edge of the print into the laminator. You’ll notice here that the release liner is being taken up by our tube. All I’m doing is putting a little downward pressure here to make sure the tube makes contact with the roller. What I like about this is I can stop my tube from turning for just a moment and lower the separation point. The lower it is, the better. Now if I want, I can always reach over and put the machine into auto run mode and speed up. And again, I’m maintaining a constant separation point all the way across the web. This is really helpful when you have an extra long print. Right after your print exits the laminator, it’s a good idea to remove the packing tape that we used to attach the facemount to the sled. Remember we left it a little bit long. That makes it easy to grab this point right here and pull it off. Now we’re ready to trim out our print. But before you start cutting out your print, take it off of your sled. Cutting prints on your sled is just going to shorten its life. And it’ll last a long time if you take care of it. We want to cut out our print exactly on the bleed. We’re going to trim it out on the bottom along this edge right on top of the bleed. We’ll also cut this side and this side. However, I want to make sure to trim off just the face mount along this top edge here and leave this 4 inches of unprinted media about 10 centimeters. This area will be used to create our edge. With our print trimmed out, there’s just a couple of things we need to cover before we mount our facemount to our acrylic. We’re going to work with the leader board. A leader board provides an area at which you can do your hinge technique. Your leader board should always be slightly wider than your sheet of acrylic and equal to or slightly less thin the thickness of your acrylic sheet. My leader board is 5 inches or about 12.5 centimeters wide. Here’s a small section of what I used for a leader board. You’ll notice this set up like my sled with a 1 inch area of exposed clear acrylic and a double sided mounting adhesive with the release liner still in place. This will be really helpful as we move forward. We need to attach our leader board to our sheet of acrylic. To do this, I’ll turn it over and place it firmly against the sheet of acrylic. I’ll use some packing tape and tape it down so that it’s nice and tight. I’ll use my paint scraper and cut the tape loose. And then I want to take my squeegee and make sure that I have a nice tight bond here. We can then turn the sheet over. And now we can remove our pre-mask. To do this, I’ll take my plastic tube and a small piece of packing tape which I’ll attach to the top of the pre-mask. I’ll squeegee it down. This will let me get the corner started. I can then take the pre-mask and wrap it around my plastic tube. Make sure you don’t pull off your pre-mask too fast. Doing so is only going to generate a lot more static electricity. The next step is to make sure that you clean the surface off with your DRS roller. I’m doing this because when we removed the paper pre-mask, you can end up with some paper dust on the surface of your acrylic. The last thing I want to do is take my flashlight and do a visual inspection running across the sheet to make sure that it’s clean as possible. Here I can see where I need to go over one more time. Do this as many times as you feel necessary to make sure that your acrylic sheet is absolutely spotless. Now I’ve already cleaned off my digital print and I’m going to place it on top of my acrylic. Now we can actually look at how to align the digital print to our acrylic sheet. For this, I’m going to use my print alignment tool called the Tyler Ruler. Using our overhead camera, you can get a better view of how the Tyler Ruler works. This is the edge detector and it’s indicated by this black line, and a pass through area. With two marks, one for 1/8”overhang and one for ¼” overhang. So just slide your digital print pass your acrylic. Slip the Tyler Ruler in place and slid your digital print to the ¼” mark. Check this end here, slide it to the ¼” mark. We’ll do a quick check here, fine adjustment. Now this will become our rotation point and we can slide the Tyler Ruler to the other end. Make a small adjustment and our print is now perfectly aligned with our acrylic. I’ll use my high-tech weight to help hold my print in place while I tape it down on the leading edge.

With our digital print aligned to our sheet of acrylic, and secured to our leaderboard here in the front, we can flip it over and squeegee down our hinge. I’ll use a small piece of electrical tape just like before and I’ll attach it to the release liner. And with a slow upward motion, I’ll make sure that I’m pulling off just the release liner and I’ll pull it back about 2 inches or half the distance of the white space here. I’ll pull my electrical tape off, turn it over, tape it down. We’ll push our print back on to our sheet of acrylic and we’re ready to go to the laminator. All of my settings are exactly the same on the JM63 as when we passed our sled to the laminator. Now when you move your sheet of acrylic over to the laminator, make sure to support your leader board. I’ll place it firmly in between the rollers and use the foot switch to job the hinge up underneath the roller. Now we can get a nice tight wrap with our digital print by passing it over the top main roller. Again, I’m going to use my tube to actually tape the release liner to it so I can use it to wind it up. Now this is the last chance that you’re going to have to make sure that your board’s clean. So I typically like to give it one last look with my flashlight and possibly run over it one more time with my DRS roller. Now we can start processing our print through the laminator. I press the foot switch and you can see here where I’m pressing down on the plastic tube to take up the release liner. I’ll go ahead and put this machine in the autorun mode so that we can do this process just a little bit faster. And there we go. The first thing I’ll do is turn our board over so that we can remove the tape that we used to tape our leaderboard to our sheet of acrylic. The next thing I want to do is take the leaderboard off. We’re going to lift up. Notice that I’m lifting up against the sheet of acrylic. This way we don’t have to worry about pulling the print away from the acrylic sheet. I’ll trim this edge right here and then we’re going to trim the corner inch bleed that we have all the way around. When you’re trimming your blade, make sure you have a good hard table surface and a good sharp knife. Press down firmly so that you can make your cuts. You don’t want to peel the facemount away from the acrylic. I’ll make these other cuts and we’ll take off our premask. Now normally, I would leave this premask on because I have a couple more steps that I want to cover but I couldn’t wait just to show you how awesome this print looks. Absolutely awesome. Now depending on the size and the thickness of your acrylic sheet, you may want to provide a backer board to the back to provide some stiffness. Now to do this, I’m actually going to work with the material called Dibond. It’s aluminum composite and I’ve covered the entire surface of the material with Drytac Suretac wide adhesive. And I want to show you an easy way to attach our backer board to our facemount, especially helpful if you’re working by yourself. The easiest way to align your Dibond to your facemount and graphic is to use three clamps for three point registration. I’ll take this long edge here and bud it up against my two clamps sliding it to the left until it hits the third clamp. Now I can pull back some of the release liner and crease it along this edge here. I’ll take my facemount print, lay it on the top, slide it down until it hits my two clamps here into the left. Now it’s in perfect registration. I’ll tack down this leading edge right here, remove this clamp, and I’ll use my heavier clamps to tack down or hold down this edge here. Now I can move to the back end or the bottom of the print. Reaching underneath, I can grab the release liner, pulling it back, and tacking the facemount and print lightly because I want to pass this through the laminator to get a nice tight bond. Now let’s look at some really unique ways to hang our finished product on the wall. One of my favorite ways to display a facemount is to actually use some hardware called standoffs. Now to do this, we’re actually going to have to drill some holes in our acrylic sheet. So let’s take a look at how that’s done. Before we drill our holes, I want to point out something that’s really important. Most people use the wrong type of drill bit when they’re drilling acrylic. Acrylic has a special bit. The point angle is at 60 degrees whereas a common metal type bit is at 120 degrees. This is to keep it from busting out when it breaks through to the other side. Now because I removed my premask, I’m going to use some removable tape just to place on the corner so that I can mark where I want to drill my holes. And once I’ve done that, I’ll slide this soft edge of the table and I’ll go ahead and drill my hole. Now I am going to go slow. And once I start to break through to the back side, I’ll reduce the speed of the drill bit and reduce the downward pressure. This will give me a cleaner hole. I’ll drill these three other holes and then we can hang our facemount on the wall. I went ahead and installed three of the four standoffs and I want to cut to an up close shot so you can actually see how to install the standoff. After you’ve drilled your hole, take a plastic anchor and place it inside the hole and make it flush with the wall surface. Take your screw, place it through the barrel of the standoff, and then I’m going to use my cordless drill to actually screw the screw into the plastic anchor securing the barrel of the standoff. Now we can attach our facemount using the cap screw here. Our last step is to attach the facemount to the standoffs using the cap screw. Place it through your acrylic sheet and line it up to the barrel screw. Screw it in place and make sure not to overtighten your cap screws. Doing so will keep your acrylic sheet from being able to expand and contract when it sees different temperature changes. Also make sure that you drill your holes slightly over sized. This way, the acrylic sheet can expand and contract and it won’t bow or bend when it’s displayed on the wall. I have to tell you there’s no better way to display a digital print or a photograph than doing a facemount. Well that’s a wrap and it’s been a lot of fun. And I’d like to thank everyone at Drytac for giving me the opportunity to share some of my knowledge about their incredible product, Facemount.