Covering white lexan?

[Double Diamond]

I am covering 2 large 4'x10' white lexan faces that have had cut vinyl on both sides and are yellowing. The new image is a dark photo of food items and I am trying to avoid using transluscent due to the cost and no short rolls available. I have had very good luck using orocal 651 to letter faces and they look great, and even had one printed over a year ago on clear layed on white.
I am thinking of using white to cover the old visible yellowing and have not printed in house for faces before and am needing to know if anyone has had good luck with printing on white 3640 and laminating then applying to lighted faces.
This is our first in house printing on a transluscent face and also need some advice. We are using a Roland sp-540v with versaworks. I have read somewhere that we need to set it to end at the starting point and print again. The exact alignment that large concerns me.
What has worked for you? Are we crazy to print on standard vinyl? Again, I have lettered and overlayed transluscent faces for over 20 years with standard and intermediate vinyl with 100% success, but I do think we may be pushing our luck on a digital print this size.
I appreciate your advice and sharing of your years of experience on this.
Joe

 

[J Hill Designs]

does 'due to cost' mean your customer doesnt want to pay or you just dont want to bring the trans vinyl in?

 

[Gino]

If I got this straight....... you won't have any light penetrating through this. Why call it a back-lit ??

Why are you taking such a cheap-O attitude towards this large of an electric sign ??

Have you quoted the customer on new faces. If both sides have been used and it's yellowing, I think it's time they get a newer product. Those faces are shot, no good finished.

What have you quoted the customer on doing for him ?? Just re-lettering existing faces and now you're trying to cut every corner you can ??

 

[Double Diamond]

The customer was given three options. We peel and clean the old faces and apply graphics, he peels and brings us the used blank faces, or of course the best and most obvious choice... supply new signs. As typical for this economy and a cheap a** customer, he went with his originally proposed idea and brought me peeled faces.
These are backlit and my supplier first priced to me 15' rolls of transluscent vinyl and I priced this job accordingly. It has now come to my attention that short rolls are recently and permanently unavailable... so my question really is rather than just hope for the best, I needed some feedback from others as to their experience using plain white vinyl like orocal 3640 for digitally printed backlit faces. I figure this is not a popular option and needed to know if it is absolutely not an option, or pehaps some others have had success with this.
I thank you for your time. Joe

 

[Gino]

Again, 3640 won't let light through or at least not enough.... it's not a translucent to my knowledge. It's a 3mil calendared very cheap vinyl. A little light will pass through, but not enough to call the sign a back-lit any longer.

Honestly, you shouldn't be giving the customer the option to remove the vinyl or even supply you with new faces. That's your job for the most part.

Sounds like the economy and cheap a** customer might be rubbing off on you. Why not just stand your ground and tell him the truth ?? This is how it is and these are your choices, but don't give a choice where your customer does your work.

I do that when wholesaling, because we're all in the business, but not to end-users. To me that looks cheap.

 

[toucan_graphics]

I have, in a pinch, printed on Oracal 651 for a back-lit sign, on Roland SP300V with Versaworks. If you set your ink density correctly there is no need to overprint. Ours was for a car wash... customer wanted it done for super bottom dollar. As it turned out he should have just bought new faces since our time to peel and clean the old ones was only a few dollars off the cost of new ones. We ended up just donating the new faces and took a $12 loss on the faces just to save ourselves the hassle. Altogether, the whole job brought us a profit of like $80, but we still came out ahead since we had extra time for other jobs that actually turned a decent profit.

My advice would be to get the customer to pony up the dough for new faces, but it's very tough to do once you agree to work with the old stuff.

 

[MontereySigns]

DD.

The Oracal 3640 will probably work fine. If you've done your job well your customer knows this won't look great but it will look OK. (You're definitely not going to brag about this later).

Also, your not going to want to install the graphics wet, since it's a cheap water-based adhesive. And, your probably only going to get a couple years out of it before is starts cracking then peeling across the graphics. Buyer and sign shop beware...

-Bud

 

[Double Diamond]

I will be using the laminator to mount this... dry. It works great. If you have not tried it, I suggest you give it a try. There's a few tricks to it, but you get perfectly lined up, even, no bubs or creases, and it's fast.
I am considering printing on 48" transluscent white lettering vinyl. It's sold by the yard and a supplier is suggesting it, but also says about the same thing about the 3640. He sais the adhesive is the only difference really. It is consistant and invisible, the 3640 may have swirls. The artwork is so dark and heavy that I think I can get away with it, but the size scares me being 4'x9'. The problem would not exist if my supplier came through though, hence the problem mid stream. And as for my customer peeling it... I had no option not to let him. He started peeling them and asked me for a price to finish it, so I priced that much higher than new faces. Mostly because the peeling job was above average in dificulty, but he managed to peel them in several hours??... I can't believe he went that far to save a few bucks, but he really is satisfying his franchise corporate office who's breathing down his neck. I may also have them printed by a wholesaler on the good transluscent.
I appreciate the feedback, it's really helping me out of a bind. Joe

 

[Techman]

You put calendared vinyl on a back lit and it will curl around the edges like a tater chip in 9 months.,
There are plenty of suppliers that will sell you short rolls of trans.

 

[300mphGraphics]

We've printed on the 3640 and laminated with the matching lam without incident several times. You have old and yellowed faces, any "swirls in the adhesive" (which I've never seen) can't be an issue. Edge curling can't be seen unless extreme, as the cabinet holding the face is in contact. If the customer wants to save a short term buck, this is what they get.

 

[Mike Paul]

The artwork is so dark and heavy that I think I can get away with it.
but he really is satisfying his franchise corporate office who's breathing down his neck.

Dark saturated prints; Sounds like a horrible looking sign. What's the franchise and logo?

Anyhow, if a franchise can't afford two 4x10ft. pieces of polycarbonate they should be out of business...

:signs101: