Signs of the Times - June 2015 - 20

Vinyl Apps

Darek Johnson
is ST's Senior
Technology Editor/
Analyst. Email him
at darek.johnson@
stmediagroup.com

By Darek Johnson

Take it off?

Everything has a point of no return.
Don't you love how bosses tend to
simplify work assignments? Like,
doesn't everyone know a chief
who believes everything is easy?
"It will just take a minute," such
bosses say.
One of my favorite signshop
stories happened the first week
on a new job. I'd signed on as a
designer, but a few days later, the
boss asked me to handle a vinylinstall job - 4-in. letters on a chiropractor's double-face directory sign
- that was on my way home. "Just
peel the old vinyl off," he said,
"and stick this down."
"It will just take a minute," he
added.
I arrived on site to find suncracked vinyl letters fused to the
Plexiglas® acrylic faces of an old,
grimy directory sign.
Did I mention it was a cold,
winter night?
After four hours of peeling and
scraping, and a trip to Walgreen's
for a $6 bottle of Goo Gone, I applied
the new letters.
The next day, the boss asked
how it went.
"Piece of cake," I said.

n Chapter 11 of his The Graphics
Installers Handbook (www.bookstore.stmediagroup.com), Rob Ivers,
who quite possibly is the authority
on vinyl applications, says "If the
vinyl is old and cracked, try one of
the chemical-removal formulae
available, or you may have to resort
to scraping the graphic off." He
then adds my favorite line: "When
that happens, I explain to customers
that I'd really like to help them,
but I'm just too busy."
Essentially, Rob is saying to back
away from unpredictable work.
Smartly, he believes every job order
should have a neat, unsurprising
and profitable end. An unfortunate,
20 SIGNS OF THE TIMES June 2015

opposite approach is displayed by
an anonymous signweb.com post
that says: "I have been asked by
a local beer company to remove
some decals off a small fleet of beer
trucks. I have been in the business
for about seven years and thought
I would be okay doing this. The
first truck took me 64 hours and
25 eraser wheels. The regular vinyl
lettering came off okay. There was
a digital print on high-performance
vinyl with a overlay over it. That
was a pain in the ... "
Another, a YouTube vinyl-removal
video, shows a shop guy fingernailpeeling dime-sized pieces of ten-yearold vinyl that, not surprisingly, are
cracked and dried like reticulatedgiraffe patterns or sundried river clay.
We all know recently applied vinyl
is easier to remove, and, thankfully,
newer formulae of vinyl media
are easier to peel than the older,
"in-the-day" products. However,
no matter the chatter, everything,
including the peachiest vinyl, has
a functioning lifetime, which is

sometimes diminished by unplanned
and unlikely actions. Think of that
lifetime when you warranty a wrap
job, and think of it again - alongside Rob's advice - when you bid
on wrap removal.
3M's Q&A site says its film series
1080 is designed to be removable for
up to three years after installation.
For longer than three years, 3M
realistically cautions that exposure
to sun, heat and other environmental
factors may eventually cause the
film's adhesive to degrade, which
may require more difficult removal
processes.
Avery Dennison® says its premiumquality SW900 Easy Apply™ cast
vinyl film for vehicle wraps is
removable up to five years.
Arlon says its DPF 6000XRP
vehicle-wrap media is rated for outdoor durability up to seven years,
if unprinted. When printed, it says
the durability is dependent on the
ink system used.
MacTac forecasts a five-year
lifespan for its IMAGIN® B-free

http://www.signweb.com http://www.bookstore.stmediagroup.com http://www.bookstore.stmediagroup.com

Signs of the Times - June 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signs of the Times - June 2015