How to remove masking tape from lots of little cuts

[justhorseriders]

Hey,

does any one have any tips of how to get the masking tape of lots of little cuts? I just cut 100 hearts and spent 20 mins taking the masking take off them haha.

[eflyguy]

A strong duct-tape like Gorilla Tape, which seems to be the most common here. I’ve used it.

Also plastic razor blades.

If you’re clever with your design, you can leave little tabs that hold the pieces in place, remove the masking as a whole, then cut the tabs away.

[PrintToLaser]

I have done orders for sheets full of tokens engraved both sides, and saved myself a week of weeding the mask off them by pulling the mask off of the board before the engraving. The smoke residue wipes right off with full strength household ammonia. Alcohol works also, but takes more elbow grease and time.

[randavian]

@PrintToLaser

The smoke residue wipes right off with full strength household ammonia.

I’m assuming this only works on PG material? Either way, that is a good tip.

[PrintToLaser]

It will work on any wood that has a sealing finish on it. On unfinished wood the smoke stain can be absorbed a little into the wood grain.
Soaking the pieces in alcohol will loosen the mask a bit so it can be removed easier.
For tiny bits like the remnants in text, I found that dragging a piece of masking or tape across the text with a fingertip will roll the pieces off easily.

[eflyguy]

In my experience, it’s not as simple as that - but not overly complicated either. Finished/coated materials wipe off easily, sanded and smooth materials (like Columbia Products ply from THD) work fairly well, but more porous and unfinished materials like cheap baltic birch or big-box generic ply tend to absorb more soot into the fibers and do not clean up as easily.

If in doubt, test first!

[deirdrebeth]

One strip:

Weeding masking with Gorilla Tape

or
The whole sheet:

Make Gorilla Tape Sheets -- Best way to remove lots of small bits of masking

I make puzzles – often with a delicate surface covered with masking tape that other methods of masking tape take either too long or destroy the finish to use (peel of each piece, stick pieces to Gorilla tape and peel off, soaking off, rubbing with magic eraser, not using at all…) The best way that I have found to quickly remove all the masking without damaging my final surface is to – while the project is still in the Glowforge – cut Gorilla tape and stick it on to cover the whole sheet of cut …

If your pieces are already apart, using a plastic razor as a scraper can also speed up the activity!

[justhorseriders]

thanks for this, how have you stuck the jigsaw pieces down so they dont come away with the masking tape?

[deirdrebeth]

On my video they’re not - you can see them pushing up and I pop them back down.

Not sure for @jamely, but I’m guessing the same.

[evansd2]

I got you covered. A search of “remove masking” yields this:

https://community.glowforge.com/search?q=remove%20masking

And the 4^th result is a topic I wrote a while back:

How to remove masking from 423 parts at once

I’ve mentioned my tape sandwich method before: Mask your material. Cut. Apply blue painters tape to the entire surface before you remove the material. Remove taped-up piece, all the cut parts should come with it. Flip and tape the other side. Now you have a tape sandwich. [image] Press the tape down thoroughly like you’re applying masking. Peel the blue tape and masking off in a sheet. [image] You’ll miss a couple pieces, but that’s ok. It’s like 98-99% effective, which is good enoug…

Whish is exactly what you’re looking for.

As for the tape choice, blue tape works well when you’ve got a relative low adhesion of your masking, like with unfinished baltic birch ply. If you are using proofgrade or acrylic (which tend to be tougher to remove masking) then follow the gorilla tape advice, it is very strong.

[marmak3261]

One thing O note about gorilla tape is that a very slow and steady pull seems to work better. It’s interesting. I haven’t done lots of tests but I wonder if there isn’t some type of Newtonian fluid dynamics going on in the adhesive where a shock stiffens it and it tears and a slow move y keeps it flexible. Just wondering out loud.

[eflyguy]

A heat gun on the material also helps soften the masking’s adhesive…

[jamesdhatch]

@deirdrebeth

One strip:

Anyone else get caught up when peeling away the masking (without using the Gorilla tape trick) and you notice you’re getting a really long piece that’s staying connected and then you ever so carefully peel so you can get the longest piece possible in one pull?

[PrintToLaser]

@marmak3261

I wonder if there isn’t some type of Newtonian fluid dynamics going on in the adhesive

I’m not sure, but I have noticed trying to peel an adhesive label that is difficult, the slower you go the better the result. Under magnification you can see the adhesive slowly releasing, whereas when you pull too quick the paper tends to tear. I think you just need to give the adhesive time to release

[EddieC]

I found what works for me really great. It’s a wood scraper I purchased mine on Amazon. you can search for it using the following text. “DFM Tool Works Blue Cabinet Scraper Rectangle”.
it only takes a couple of scrapes across the wood (With the wood grain). This thing has saved me hours of weeding.

best of luck.

[justhorseriders]

Thanks everyone for there suggestions ill give them all a go

[rbtdanforth]

As noted elsewhere:
A note on weeding:
The key fact is that the masking sticky side will stick to itself far stronger than it will stick to anything else, even if the connection is less than a square millimeter.

This also includes the wood material. A secondary fact is that a very tiny pull will still pull the masking from the wood however slowly. Therefore, even if the masking is a quarter millimeter wide and will break if pulled too hard, it can be pulled below its breaking point and eventually pull cleanly away.

This means that even if hard to get started, if the tiniest bit can be pulled free and facing up, another piece of masking sticky side down will not grab anything hard except that tiny bit of flipped masking and it will grab that very well. If the piece is engraved with lots of tiny islands the sticky side down masking will pull the edge of that island just enough to grab the whole piece and remove it. If the piece is pierced as with the usual lamps the entire masking could be pulled as one piece if one is careful and patient enough. I do that with the less challenging pieces all the time by just keeping up a very slight and steady pull.

It is true that Gorilla Tape will grab the top of the masking stronger than the bottom will grab the work, but it is also clumsy and can damage a more delicate cutout by pulling hard enough to break it. Having found the technique above I have not bothered with others though they may also work.