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What setup do you use to cut safety film on site?

scottp
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scottp

scottp

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Good Afternoon, 

        I am struggling to come up with an ideal portable setup to cut both security and solar film at a customers location. What I have now is a 3'x7' 1/2"PVC table top that sits on a 6' folding table. I use a STAR-M Ceramic cutter along the edge. One Major issue is I cannot make a cut in the middle of the table since the cutter needs an edge to run along. I could go on and on. The issue with cutting solar film is my knife blade catches the PVC edge. I have a glass cutting table at the shop which works well but is not portable. Any and all suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!

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gimpy

gimpy

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What is wrong with cutting out of the box?

I use a standard Olfa blade for 2 mil and a 4" scraper blade for 6 mil+. Width plus 1".

I rarely attempt to cut the width perfectly as truly square window frames are uncommon.

Also widths can vary from window to window by 1/4 to 1/8.

Once you know how to cut corners properly, edge cutting is easy.

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Tintguy1980

Tintguy1980

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21 hours ago, gimpy said:

What is wrong with cutting out of the box?

I use a standard Olfa blade for 2 mil and a 4" scraper blade for 6 mil+. Width plus 1".

I rarely attempt to cut the width perfectly as truly square window frames are uncommon.

Also widths can vary from window to window by 1/4 to 1/8.

Once you know how to cut corners properly, edge cutting is easy.

Nothing wrong with cutting from the box; it's simply another method that can be perfected.

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TomTint

TomTint

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If you are only doing a few pieces, cutting out of a box will be fine.. if you are doing thousands of SF.. you simply can't beat a FH. The savings in time and minimal wasted material will pay for the FH in short order. We did a 20k sf 8 mil job this past summer and without FHs going it would have been ridiculously more time consuming. 

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tint45

tint45

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On 12/31/2018 at 11:22 AM, gimpy said:

What is wrong with cutting out of the box?

I use a standard Olfa blade for 2 mil and a 4" scraper blade for 6 mil+. Width plus 1".

I rarely attempt to cut the width perfectly as truly square window frames are uncommon.

Also widths can vary from window to window by 1/4 to 1/8.

Once you know how to cut corners properly, edge cutting is easy.

 

This is interesting. Could you give a bit more detail on that? Do you just punch it through the box like you would an ofla?

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Tint Eastwood

Tint Eastwood

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1 hour ago, tint45 said:

 

This is interesting. Could you give a bit more detail on that? Do you just punch it through the box like you would an ofla?

Yes

 

Way back when I worked for another company I cut every job onsite out of the box. Would use olfa blade for 1-4 mil and scraper blades for anything above 4 mil. If it still wanted to walk the blade I'd double or triple up the blade so it was a little stiffer. Eventually I started using the aluminum channel on the box edge for better chop cut and helped hold the blade a little better.

 

Been using the film handler for close to 10 years now, only cut out of the box when I absolutely have to.   

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