Protective peeling film layer

These peeling films are supposed to be easily …. peelable!

But read-on, to avoid annoying your customer, or even worse, have your product with that horrible film torn in pieces or left forever like that on the market.

These layers, usually transparent plastic films, are placed on flat surfaces as one of the first manufacturing operations.

Sometimes even provided on the raw material plates and left during the process until the final user, “for the user to take off” (a gift?)

Their purpose is to protect flat surfaces (metal plates painted or not, plastic screens …) from being scratched either during the process or during transport.

Customer view, not solving just your manufacturing problem

You place the film(s), or get the pieces of plates already fit with the films, but customers have to take them out.

And what looks easy for you, may not be so easy for them.

Customers may not have your experience or your tools. And very possibly the glue will change over time so as the resistance of the film, making the nice-to-peel-in-the-lab tearing in pieces when put in the hands of your customers

TIP: always test on a finished product, after some time of storage, and maybe after a back-and-forth transport cycle or some exposure to UV light (labs exist to simulate climatic and UV aging conditions)

Design solutions

• better thicker than thinner, if you have the choice & budget
• Preferably have a protruding tong in a corner to be accessible; if not, consider a corner cut
• depending on the application, some printed text on the film could avoid that the user doesn’t even see that it was to take off (“I just thought it was bad transparency quality of the glass”)
• … and never ever pinch the sides between two factory assembled parts; chances are so high that your user will just never get the layer completely out.

Or do not put the main product label or product references or “Quality Controlled Passed” label over these removable films 🙂

Turning these film layers into features

Ideas:

• Why would the film not stay as an end-user protective film? (mobile applications: users even pay to apply such films … why not put that directly at the factory, a bit thicker film?)
• as support for printed marketing or brand?
• used as Instruction For Use? (at least captures some attention before being taken out) … if replaceable, could even be used as a sticky note & be stuck in a handy place?
• other possibilities?

Other examples

Click on the thumbnails below to zoom in full size: