How to Choose the Right Protective Film for Your Application

If your product requires a protective film, choosing the right material is essential to making sure that that product's going to function as intended in its end application. In this video, we've teamed up with Pregis to discuss how to make the right material selection for your project and how to turn that into a custom solution that's going to deliver the performance you need in your application.

How Do Converters and Material Suppliers Work Together to Find the Best Solution?

At Strouse, we create custom die cut solutions using protective film using productions methods such as laminating, slitting, or custom die cutting. But before the custom part solution can happen, we got to select the right material. And that's where working with a supplier like Prius is essential. Now, let's hear from Jon at Pregis to see how they work with converters to select the right material for your application. We uh typically initiate a conversation uh to understand what the application is and we initiate what we call an MEF or a masking evaluation form. This helps us understand the materials, the processes, all the environment that the product will need to work in. And then we will typically ask for three or four samples uh that'll enable us to do the actual application testing. We will look for aging, ghosting, transfer of adhesive, these kinds of residues. Depending on the environment, we may um put it through accelerated aging uh environments where we look at it at high temperature and high humidity and we will report the findings back out in a technical report which will recommend a couple of products and give you the feedback on the performance of the films that were evaluated in the surface.

How Does the Industry or Application Affect the Protective Film You Choose?

Protective film is used across a wide range of industries, but every application has different requirements. Factors such as surface energy, environment, or how you plan on applying the part are all things we need to take in account when sourcing the right protective film. Now, let's hear from Jon on what Pregis considers when selecting the right protective film for the application. So, different industries will have different requirements. They may have mandates or compliance requirements. Um, so these are things that we consider as we look through our portfolio of offerings and find a match. We'll make sure that we're um selecting products that meet those requirements and then also validating that often with some particular testing. Examples might be in automotive and aerospace you have to do some um aging studies in real life environments where you actually place panels outside. These are things that we participate in and and drive ourselves.

How Can High-Quality Protective Film Deliver a Return on Investment?

The value of protective film goes beyond the upfront material cost. Pairing the right protective film material with a custom diecut solution can help you reduce waste, improve consistency, and ultimately make your part more efficient to apply. Now, let's let Jon explain how selecting the right protective film can be a great return on investment. We're using the right film and the right product on the right surface, you're seeing a lot less rework and a lot less scrap. That's fewer damage claims and higher throughput uh as a product is being produced. And why is this matters is we're all seeing higher levels of cost and uh cost increases on our raw materials. And so the cost of reworking these materials or scrapping them is higher than ever. So this is a a great impact that you should see uh very quickly.

What Are Some Common Misconceptions About Protective Film?

Selecting the right protective film might seem pretty easy, but if you happen to select the wrong protective film, that can lead to issues such as surface damage, improper adhesion, or difficulty removing the part. To wrap things up, let's let Pregis address some of the most common misconceptions about selecting protective film.  So, the number one misconception that I see converters and customers have is that there's a one-size fits-all approach. Uh, we really do recommend that we have a specific film for a specific surface. Sometimes there's some efficiencies where a particular protective film may work across a couple of different surfaces, but it's a it's a mistake to think that you can just use that film on any surface. We have uh plenty of examples where customers have done that. For example, they may have changed their supplier for a red painted surface and assumed red is red. Well, what you may find out is that there's a difference in the chemical makeup of that uh paint or surface coating and you will get a different um performance. And number two, simple hand testing, hand applied testing is not a sufficient way to evaluate uh product compatibility.

As you can see from this video, there's a lot more that goes into a custom protective film solution than just selecting the right material and applying it to the surface. We hope this video has given you better insight into how protective films are selected and how a custom converted part can help in your application. If you have any questions about a protective film application you may be working on or other flexible material applications, you can always reach out to the St team directly. Or if you have any more questions, you can always check out our learning center where we have articles and videos on a variety of topics. Thanks for watching.