Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
I have a customer that is wanting license plates for there vehicles. I think I am going to do this in vinyl but was wanting to throw out a few questions first. Is it possible to do lic. plates on a heat transfer (laser printer)? Is there a better blank aluminum or plastic? Who wholesales these? Saw a post from Rodney about wholesaledirectusa.com. did I miss anything?
yeah, you can make some great license plates and LP frames with dye-sub, but they will fade under the UV light in the outdoors. So make sure the customer understands that so they are not disappointed when it fades. There is supposedly some clear UV protector (one called Frog Juice) you can spray over them that helps prevent the fading, but I've never used it.
You can do the sub dye frames but you will want to seal it with a UV protectorate. If you go with cut vinyl as I would, Id still seal it with something along the lines of Frog Juice brand sealer. Im not sure if you can use Frog Juice on a sub dyed design without damaging the design. You may be able to just use a clear artist spray to get some extra life out of it.
I keep a stock of license plates that I purchased from Signwarehouse. Up to this point I've used a cutter with Oracal 651 vinyl. I also use Frog Juice and it rocks. It goes on with a cheap foam brush and smooths out to be like glass. Hope this helps.
Oracal 651 is sign vinyl, like a decal. You just cut it with a vinyl cutter and then apply it to the license plate. Pretty easy to do if you have a cutter. Of course you are limited to 1 color for each vinyl cut you do. With sublimation, the # of colors are unlimited, but it doesn't hold up as well under the UV sunlight, and it's more expensive than vinyl.
Vinyl is a great medium for stuff like license plates, you don't want to make any designs that are too fine with vinyl or weeding (hand process where you remove all the unwanted vinyl after the cut) is a real bear. You can use multiple colors with vinyl, you just have to manually line them all up before applying them to a surface. I don't know how much dye sub costs yet, but vinyl runs as little as $70 for a 24" x 50' roll (far less than a dollar a square).
High performance vinyl that will last five to seven years plus, cost ( with the transfer tape ) about 3 dollars for a 12 x 24 inch wide piece. There is no lamination needed. But could not hurt. Got tags 7 years old and no problems. Please advise a clear tag cover is a good idea.
Are you guys talking about actual license plates, or the frames that go around them? Just curious because here in Texas, the law requires official plates on both front and back. Do other states let you make your own custom license plates?
I'm in Jersey and we can't use anything but the official DMV tags front and rear. I'm right on the border of Pennsylvania and they only have a single rear license plate so many people will make a customized front "plate" that has nothing to do with vehicle registration, just decoration. If you are in a two plate state these might not be such a hot seller.
i still have my sublimated license plate frame in my car for almost 1 year now and it did not fade. i'm in los angeles,california.
i used easy flow system with artainium ink w/ license plate frame from coastgraphicsupply.com.
Re: Wrong thread but not sure where??? 
