Canvas Stretching Machine, LLC

RThe "Gallery Stretcher 60" was conceived, designed and built by a local custom frame shop to increase productivity. This Canvas Stretcher was built for the frame shop and by the frame shop to reduce their labor costs. Typically, a 40" X 40" canvas would require about 15-20 minutes for a seasoned employee to stretch, this impacted other areas of the frame shop that services large commercial accounts.

Greg Moulin, a seasoned graphic artist and the owner of the custom frame shop, combined forces with Dave Weaver, a retired Coast Guard Engineer Officer, to create a simple, light-weight and affordable device that was extremely portable and required little to no training, the result was a fully pneumatic canvas stretching machine. After several prototypes and nearly one year of extensive testing the Canvas Stretching Machine,LLC was "born", the "Gallery Stretcher 60" is the first official product. They are already planning to introduce a second generation stretcher that will incorporate a "track-mounted" pneumatic staple gun with sensors to detect the presence of the canvas.

The Market:
It was never intended to be manufactured and sold to other custom frame shops or artists, this seemed counter-productive to Greg, the owner. He then realized that there has been a rapid increase in the number of small businesses that print to canvas, everyone that prints to canvas could benefit with such a machine. If you print art to canvas and are sending your customers out the door with an unstretched canvas you are losing money.

Features:
The original Canvas Stretching Machine, first introduced early September of 2007, has evolved into what is now being called the "Gallery Stretcher". The base model, a 60" model, is a fully pneumatic machine that will stretch original art, fabric and fine art giclee canvas up to 60" X 60". Because of it's unique design they are able to build a machine up to 8'.

The "Gallery Stretcher" is a fully pneumatic Canvas Stretching Machine that is designed to mount on the side of a typical workbench. A "clamping bar" is controlled by a foot pedal and it is "normally closed", depressing the foot pedal "opens" the clamp, this allows the operator to move freely about. The "stretching bar" is regulated and actuated with a toggle valve located on the right-side of the machine. A pressure gauge is also mounted on the console to indicate "stretcher bar" pressure. A typical "giclee" requires only 15-25 psi of "stretcher bar" pressure, a heavy canvas may require as much as 50-70 psi. The "clamping bar" is pre-set to 50 psi, this ensures a sufficient amount of "slip" to prevent "over-stretching" or damage to light canvas.

Summary:
There are several mechanical and pneumatic canvas stretching machines currently on the market, but there is only one fully pneumatic canvas stretching machine that allows the operator to apply staples to the front and make the folds in-place with the artwork facing up... and all of this can be done in less than 3 minutes.