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.
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Need Help Any one do decals for aircraft? inside and out
- Thread starter JennMcC
- Start date
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?
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
I'm here for Educational Purposes
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
Boudica
I'm here for Educational Purposes
happy if I helped
I did a search on the forum, it looks like there are several threads on the subject:
Search results for query: airplane
www.signs101.com
Thanks for the Info !
I believe you have! thank you. very much appreciated.happy if I helped
Search results for query: airplane
Problem that we have had trying to get away from screen printing these kinds of labels is we use ecosolvent (which the go to technology for digital printing labels) for wide format and there aren’t any of the durable films required for aerospace applications available for that inkset. I think latex is better for that but I don’t know the tech well and I’ve heard not great things over the years. Since we are a contract print shop, I charge what I need to charge for screen printing and if they don’t want to pay, then I don’t need the business. The certs and conformance information required is a huge pain for us so we charge document fees too. We are looking to get into UV LED technology so we can print on durable materials digitally. Problem is, that’s going to be an expensive endeavor if you are just an in house print shop. As for cutting, the edge plotters are great bc of the pin system. Keeps the registration tight. Regular plotters are never going to be as accurate so you need to go to flat bed digital cutting which is another expensive piece of equipment. You can get everything used but I would still expect to spend $100k to get what you need.
We still have an Edge 2 and plotter that we use specifically for short run durable labels, but you are right, every week it gets more expensive and harder to find the supplies.
We still have an Edge 2 and plotter that we use specifically for short run durable labels, but you are right, every week it gets more expensive and harder to find the supplies.
tulsagraphics
New Member
Installed? Nope. Produced? Yes. (just a handful of times -- not too many) I've done several fleets of small planes (mostly logos and tail numbers for training centers), as well as larger graphics for American Airlines. The specs were always IJ180+8518 (I print w/ eco-sol exclusively, but these customers didn't appear to have a preference). Small fleets weren't that picky, but American wanted documentation the materials came straight from 3M. No other hoops to jump through. I imagine your situation could vary if you have a lot of customers in the aviation industry (regardless of whether or not regulations require certain films/methods -- some customers will be more "by the book" than others). FWIW
somcalmetim
New Member
Depends if you are doing interior or exterior.
Interior signage like seat numbers or door signs would likely be better in a thin routered or lasered acrylic adhesive tag that doesn't wear off in high traffic areas.
For exterior decals it depends on their regulations if you can even touch it...
-We have done standard installs on small planes.
-On a fighter jet Mako-Shark restoration we could only help install a paint mask without knives and the airplane mechanic had to paint it.
--The fighter jet people asked about 3M Leading edge wing tape and 3M would not even sell it to us, they only sold it directly to registered airplane repair facilities.
Interior signage like seat numbers or door signs would likely be better in a thin routered or lasered acrylic adhesive tag that doesn't wear off in high traffic areas.
For exterior decals it depends on their regulations if you can even touch it...
-We have done standard installs on small planes.
-On a fighter jet Mako-Shark restoration we could only help install a paint mask without knives and the airplane mechanic had to paint it.
--The fighter jet people asked about 3M Leading edge wing tape and 3M would not even sell it to us, they only sold it directly to registered airplane repair facilities.
JBurton
Signtologist
I find this hilarious, like, if the vinyl fails, they would prefer to go back to the manufacturer rather than the company that produced it? I'd rather get the $5k graphics package reimbursed vs the $1k in materials, but I guess they figure they could prosecute 3m for the failure and recoup something more since they are a bigger target.
There was an aircraft graphics company local to me that wanted to sell off, so they sent out some numbers to entice buyers. The scariest thing to me was the 2 gerber edge's that supported the entire operation that were only aging out. One wonders why gerber is letting that go out to pasture in such a drawn out manner... googling about, you can still buy a 'new' edge for 18k. It's just weird.
d fleming
New Member
For my customer everything I do is good enough. There may be specs for other areas that I am not aware of.