Tutorials 09

How to calculate how much adhesive film I need

Description

Very often we had to answer a seemingly simple question asked by several users.

“How do I calculate how much I need adhesive film to renew my stuffs?”

To try to answer this question exhaustively in this small tutorial.

Let’s calculate the measurement of the film

Each application is subjective. The factors that may modify the choice of the necessary quantity of film to be used are multiple and vary from project to project. In principle it is however possible to determine the amount by following a very simple logic. Ie the theory of the “+10”.

+ 10cm. Simple and Fast.

No matter if you decide to apply the film on a large or small area, if you decide to do the edges, or the back or just the front. With the law of +10 hardly wrong to do the calculations.

To any surface in fact you always have to add 10cm margin more than the actual extent of the surface to be coated.

In fact, as shown in Fig A on each side of the film should have at least 5cm of bleeds to be sure to coat all sides and leave a tolerance that allows you to recover in case of error.

Standard margin to maintain.

An example.

Let us assume that you have a wardrobe to be renewed. First I have to decide which parts of my closet I mean covered. In this case I want to apply the film only on the doors and on the front only. A very simple thing. Each door of my closet measuring 250cm in height and 50cm in width. In everything I have 6 doors.

With the law of +10 my size will change and will be: 260 x 60 cm at every door. No matter if you decide to take a piece or an entire roll, for me each measuring 10cm door more than the actual size.

first of all I see that as I 60cm width. So I’ll definitely buy the film with a minimum width of 60cm in order to cover the entire width. So: Film width 60cm.

Length: the length x 260cm I will have to calculate the number of doors. 260 x 6 = 1560cm, ie 15.60 mt. of length.
TOTAL: in this case I’ll have to order at least 60cm wide 15,60mt film.

Why is it important to the margin.

At first glance it may seem that these guidelines are only designed to make you buy more material. Nothing could be more wrong. These considerations are made to help you make the right material and avoid you unpleasant incidents.

What may in fact accadare is that without calculating a minimum margin’ll not enough film to coat the entire surface.
We take the example above.

We admit that it has not calculated the margin of 10cm but wanted to keep exactly 50cm wide film, as the doors of my closet. Basically I just have to put on the front. Why “waste” film ??

Look at the figure below.

As you can see if at the starting point (1), apply my adhesive film is not perfectly parallel to the well perimeter of only 2mm (2), look at what happens when you are at the end of my door (3).

This situation happens to everyone, even to the professionals at times. And many times you find that you are applying out too late axis, reapply when it is too late.

That’s why a margin of tolerance is important.

Some practical suggestions for measurement before purchase.

One of the tips that we always recommend is to simplify the surfaces to be renewed. This makes it even easier to calculate how much material you need.

You decide what to play and measure every surface as if it were a thing unto itself.

If the surface is very wide, help you with a piece of paper and a pen. Write down the various measures always adding +10.

Mark them and divide them into wide order. According to that fact, then you decide the roll to be taken. Calculated as film widths you need, and then calculated for each of the total length.

We hope that these small precautions can be of help for your project.

And remember: “Renew don’t Replace”!

Have a Good job!

 

Practical example: renovating the kitchen drawers

We find ourselves wanting to renew the drawers of this kitchen cabinet, with the product WD-002 Matt Dark Gray Oak:

NOTE: in this specific case we want to apply the films keeping the grain vertical. We perform step by step the calculation of the measures of the film to be purchased.

  1. First we divide the drawers by group, according to their measurements, and we indicate the number of drawers for each group in a table:
    GROUP MEASURE (width x height) QUANTITY
    A 80 x 30 x4
    B 70 x 15 x4
    C 70 x 30 x2

    TOT height: 240 cm

  2. The second step is to determine how we want to apply. In our case we want to apply the film not only on the front, but also on the edges of the drawers, which measure 2 cm. We then add 2 cm for each side to the previous measurements.
    GROUP MEASURE (width x height) QANTITY
    A 84 x 34 x4
    B 74 x 19 x4
    C 74 x 34 x2

    TOT height: 280 cm

  3. Now let’s use the +10 rule, adding 5cm for each side. In this way we can cover part of the back as shown in the figure. The new measures are shown in the table.
    GROUP MEASURE (width x height) QANTITY
    A 94 x 44 x4
    B 84 x 29 x4
    C 84 x 44 x2

    TOT height: 380 cm

  4. Let’s look at the widths. The selected product is available in the widths 30, 60, 90 and 122 cm, let’s compare them with ours:
    • Group A measures 94 cm wide. This value is very close to the 90 cm of the product. From point 2 we know that the real measurement is 84 cm, so if we ordered the width 90 we will have 6 cm more of film (3 cm for each side). Will they be enough to avoid application problems? Yes, they are already fine, even if they are not the 10 cm of the mentioned rule.
    • Group B and Group C measure 84cm wide. 90cm film is the most suitable.

    So, as for the width, we choose the 90 cm option.

  5. Now let’s calculate the length of film we need:
      • TYPE A: 44 x 4 = 176 cm
      • TYPE B: 29 x 4 = 116 cm
      • TYPE C: 44 x 2 = 88 cm

    TOT = 380 cm

  6. For the film length we have different cuts available on the product page: 2.5 m – 5 m – 10 m – PER LINEAR METER. The most convenient choice in our case is the LINEAR METER, because we can obtain a roll of 4 m in length, reducing the waste of material to only 20 cm.

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