Face-to-Face with Plexiglass Mounting
There has been an interesting surge of interest (is that redundant?) amongst our customers regarding the process of face-mounting (also known as “second surface mounting”) digital prints to plexiglass or acrylic equivalents.
FYI, digital c print is the generic name for Lamba, Chromeira and Light-jet prints (among other trade names for digitally recording images onto photographic media)
it’s apparently become an extremely popular means of preserving and displaying photographic or any digitally printed artwork—one might go as far as to call it a fad! That is where the REALLY interesting part comes in….(okay, I need a life-but bare with me).
Face-mounting film or prints to plexiglass as a finishing process, in the world of commercial large format imaging, has existed for years. It has been used most commonly for sandwiching duratrans or duraclear prints for installation in backlit display situations, such as lightboxes (you’ve seen them everywhere forever—bus shelters, airports, museums, stores, etc.). Why has it suddenly taken off as a popular finish for artists and photographers? Because it looks VERY cool when used with opaque prints as well, and it’s a good means of protecting and displaying artwork as well.
If applied properly (no bubbles,no dust, no hairs, no sandwich bits), face-mounting to plexiglass provides a very rich, clean and visually striking means of showcasing your imagery (be certain your lab uses a high-grade “archival” adhesive like Optimount Ultra to prevent acid decay). Typically, a backing is also used to protect the rear of the print and to facilitate display mounting (you can attach them to a wall without damaging the back of the print).
Backing substrates can be as simple and inexpensive as illustration board on the low end, plexiglass or sintra on the medium side and aluminum or other metallic composites on the high-end. Don’t get too carried away here though, as the backing adds weight which will increase shipping costs and even rip out large sections of your dry wall, yuk-yuk.
After snooping around and checking out some of the relevant blog sites which are great sources of real world information and feedback (www.largeformatphotography.info and www.photos.net), it seems that the only explanation I could find to describe the face mounting process is that it is basically the same process as traditional face-mounting to plexi: Print, clear glue plus plexiglass, except they guarantee that it will be very clean and dust free (as any good lab should be able to do, if you ask me-I didn’t know you could patent cleanliness, otherwise my Mom would’ve been rich!)
If anyone out there wants to knows more about this mysterious process, feel free to e-mail me at dmorse@printpromotion.com.
I’d also be curious to know who started adapting this process as an artistic vehicle, as it is indeed a very cool twist on the old.
Thanks for baring with me…
Cheers!
Dan
Filed under: Proofs, Questions about active job or job status, Products, Design, Education, Technology, Digital C Print on September 14th, 2006