We use Oracal 3165RA and 210 for nearly all of our "standard" durability work on DiBond. For the extra few dollars for a material with air egress, our overall mounting quality has improved exponentially. Its a five year material and the better DiBond grade has a five year durability, so I feel confident assuring customers that they should expect five years of overall durability.
When I first took over this business a year ago I couldn't understand why we were buying the lowest priced medias and gallons and gallons of RapidTac. There also was a huge garden sprayer of soapy water solution in the shop area and we were STILL putting out signs with all sorts of bubble issues and scratches. My predecessor and the employee never wanted to unweb the laminator to use it for mounting, especially on large prints, so they'd hand apply even 4'x8' or larger prints while getting a cheap shower from the sprayer at the same time. LOL
Nor did they know you could reduce scratches from hand mounting if you sprayed the laminated surface with a little soapy water before and while squeegeeing instead of the sticky side.
I would actually rerun and remount the worst of them at night without our inherited employee knowing it to spare his feelings about being one of the slowest, least efficient yet highly experienced signmakers I've ever worked with. Finally, my financial concerns and logic took over and the employee, lousy materials and most of the RapidTac have been replaced. We also have lots of the felt block squeegees and other scratch reducing tools now that maybe cost about $100 total and are giving much better results. Our laminator has become a valuable multi-tasking tool as its manufacturers intended and our work all looks much better.
