Every Helmet Has a Story. CONVEX® GearWrap Makes It Last.
Picture this: A motocross rider hits a berm at full tilt, goes down hard, slides across the dirt and gets up brushing dust off their jersey. Their helmet? Not a scratch on the graphics. They are still sharp, still vibrant, edges still locked down like day one.
Meanwhile, at a high school football game, kids are knocking heads, helmets are baking in the sun on the sidelines, and after the game the headgear, cleats, and pads are thrown in a bag in the hot trunk of a car.
Different worlds. Same hero. That's CONVEX® GearWrap from Graphic Marking Systems.
We Felt Your Pain – We Found the Solution
Here's the thing nobody tells you until you've ruined a few: Helmets are one of the hardest surfaces on earth to apply decals to properly.
It's not just that they're curved, it's that they're curved in every direction at once. That smooth dome shape is what engineers call a compound curve, and it's the natural enemy of flat vinyl. Regular decal material puckers, wrinkles, bubbles at the edges, and eventually starts peeling like a bad sunburn.
And then comes the fun part. The season ends, the helmets need refurbishing - new padding, touch ups, and fresh decals. Football, and motor bike helmet shells are made of enamel-painted polycarbonate - a high-energy surface that standard adhesives like more than the vinyl decal. So, there you are, scraping away at decals that have fused themselves to the shell, leaving behind a sticky, gummy residue that laughs at your fingernails and eats your afternoon. Adhesive remover can trash the helmet surface, or thin the residue and spread it around, ending in a dull, still tacky surface.
There's no middle ground. Until there is.
We heard you, "I need a vinyl that actually sticks to curves and comes off clean when I need it to." We created the solution: CONVEX GearWrap
The Art of Putting GearWrap on Helmets
Whether it's a motorcycle helmet screaming down a track, a baseball batting helmet digging into a box, a cyclist's lid cutting through wind, or a construction worker's hard hat baking on a jobsite - GearWrap doesn't play favorites. It's formulated for any enamel-painted polycarbonate surface, which covers just about every helmet you'll encounter.
The vinyl is highly pliable, meaning it actually conforms to compound curves instead of fighting them.
Apply from the center outward, work out any air tunnels as you go, and the graphic lays down smooth - no wrinkles, no bubbling, no frustration. For especially large designs (think LA Rams), strategic cuts through the center of the decals help the material wrap cleanly around even the tightest curves.
Sticks Hard. Leaves Clean.
GearWrap's adhesive is where the real magic lives. It grips with serious aggression, the kind that survives rain, heat, dust, mud, and the general chaos that helmets tend to encounter. Yet it's also initially repositionable, so if you place it slightly off-angle, you can lift and re-set it right away before it locks in.
And when it's time to refresh the graphics - new season, new sponsor, new team colors - GearWrap removes cleanly without residue for up to a full year after application. GearWrap adhesive likes the vinyl more than the helmet surface. That’s why it removes clean. No heat gun wrestling. No razor blade archaeology. No sticky halo left behind on a $300 helmet.
For print shops producing high volumes, for equipment managers running a fleet of helmets, for anyone who needs to turn around a refurbish job fast - that clean removal is an absolute gamechanger.
A Pro Setup for Pro Results
GearWrap is available in 4 mil and 8 mil thicknesses, in both clear and white, and plays nicely with Gerber Edge thermal printers and wide-format setups. Pair it with CONVEX Laminate - which is just as flexible as GearWrap itself - and you've got a decal system with serious impact protection and a finish that looks factory-quality every single time.
It also bonds beautifully to other high-energy surfaces like stainless steel and glass, so wherever your production work takes you beyond helmets, GearWrap follows.
The Wrap-Up
Helmets go places other surfaces don't. They take impacts, endure weather, get tossed in bags, and still need to look sharp when it counts. GearWrap was designed with all of that in mind - tough enough for the punishment, flexible enough for the curves, and clean enough to make the next job just as easy as the first.
If your shop is printing helmet graphics and you're not using GearWrap, the good news is, it’s one click away.