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Need Help Any one do decals for aircraft? inside and out

J

JennMcC

New Member
Looking for other individuals that have the challenges of creating decals and labels for aircraft. mostly commercial. eg seat description 1 AB, 1CD etc or like CREW ONLY. I work for a manufacturer and we have recently brought our label shop back in house. We are using the Gerber edge FX and Envision plotter with a royal sovereign laminator. I am looking to upgrade and I am curious what others are using successfully. any help would be appreciated. I am sorry if this is in the wrong area.
 
J

JennMcC

New Member
Boudica said:
We do aircraft decals and other stickers. There is no real challenge though.
Click to expand...
Do you have to adhere to process specifications? I have specifications for vinyl type, laminate, and type of printing process that can be used. ( mind you our processes are forever years old!) but I still have to stick to them. what type of equipment are you using if you don't mind me asking?
 
Stacey K

Stacey K

I like making signs
I've done some and I just use whatever vinyl I use for vehicles and my normal equipment of HP115 and Summa cutter.

What are the specifications? Maybe we can tell you what equipment might be best.
 
d fleming

d fleming

New Member
One of my biggest customers works on aircraft and refuel tankers. I use eco sol inkset on a squirt jet and cast air egress + cast lam on everything. For exterior logos, #'s etc on actual aircraft I make paint masks and they spray them on with paint. Only exception there is if they have to have a fresh base paint job on aircraft that have to be on the tarmac short term nad stay on ground. We cut #'s in crap vinyl as they will be taken off same day once the aircraft is moved to another hangar.
 
Boudica

Boudica

I'm here for Educational Purposes
JennMcC said:
Do you have to adhere to process specifications? I have specifications for vinyl type, laminate, and type of printing process that can be used. ( mind you our processes are forever years old!) but I still have to stick to them. what type of equipment are you using if you don't mind me asking?
Click to expand...
For the Plane decals (their logo) it's a print/contour cut and we use IJ180 - cast vinyl. We also do a lot of "kit stickers" (they are arial fire fighters) which we do on hi-tac vinyl (Ij3920). The equipment we use: Epson S80600; Kayla laminator; Summa S2-Class T plotter.
These are just like everything else we do in line with vehicle graphics. It's no different.
We don't install them though - they just pick them up and they do their own installation.

ETA: As far as customer specs.... we may have gone over what we use the first time they came in, and what we use was fine with them. I don't really remember, we've been doing these for over 5 years.
 
J

JennMcC

New Member
Stacey K said:
I've done some and I just use whatever vinyl I use for vehicles and my normal equipment of HP115 and Summa cutter.

What are the specifications? Maybe we can tell you what equipment might be best.
Click to expand...
We have to use approved vendors so 3M is our approved vendor ( or Gerber ) , then we have to use specific vinyl ( mostly dependent on what our drawings say). so for laminate we have to use FR83 and Clear is 220-114 I assume these are common vinyl however we have to make sure they pass flammability tests and adhesive pull tests. my concern is more what type of ink is going to be suitable for small graphics less than 16"*24" down to 0.60"*1.2" My tolerances are small as in they need to be bang on. If it calls for 1.4"*2.4" it needs to be that. consistently. and text needs to be the same way. I need to propose to my employer how we can be more efficient, and jump into a more current way of doing things. our engineering department looses their minds if anything is off, or changes.
thanks for listing to my rambling. just trying to find some knowledge that I do not have.
 
J

JennMcC

New Member
d fleming said:
One of my biggest customers works on aircraft and refuel tankers. I use eco sol inkset on a squirt jet and cast air egress + cast lam on everything. For exterior logos, #'s etc on actual aircraft I make paint masks and they spray them on with paint. Only exception there is if they have to have a fresh base paint job on aircraft that have to be on the tarmac short term nad stay on ground. We cut #'s in crap vinyl as they will be taken off same day once the aircraft is moved to another hangar.
Click to expand...
thanks for the info! We used to do screen printing but I believe that was to costly. and then switched to the Gerber thermal system. It would be different if Gerber was still producing this system and tweeking and making it better but it just seems like we are waiting for it to die. ( it works good when it works good ). do you know if there is an industry standard for this? like " most manufacturers use XYZ vinyl and inks, on XXX machines?
 
Boudica

Boudica

I'm here for Educational Purposes
I see, yes I think there are some pretty strict guidelines for air craft graphics. There have been other threads about it. I wonder if since the aircraft we do are arial fire fighters, the guidelines aren't as rigid? because they are not commercial passenger planes?
 
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Reactions: 1 user
J

JennMcC

New Member
Boudica said:
For the Plane decals (their logo) it's a print/contour cut and we use IJ180 - cast vinyl. We also do a lot of "kit stickers" (they are arial fire fighters) which we do on hi-tac vinyl (Ij3920). The equipment we use: Epson S80600; Kayla laminator; Summa S2-Class T plotter.
These are just like everything else we do in line with vehicle graphics. It's no different.
We don't install them though - they just pick them up and they do their own installation.

ETA: As far as customer specs.... we may have gone over what we use the first time they came in, and what we use was fine with them. I don't really remember, we've been doing these for over 5 years.
Click to expand...
Thank you Boudica, I appreciate your help. I am doing "labels" for the dash-8 series ( all) and will be doing for the CL515 eventually.
 
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