Joshica

Curious if it would be beneficial to laminate over a decal I am doing. It's a large two color overlay on magnetic backing. It's a large solid black parallelagram with the letters GC in the center. These are for a construction company and will on their machinery in all weather conditions. Where and what type of Laminate/overly do I need if I do need it. Any feedback would be great...still pretty new at this. I have a Roland GX-24 so I will not printing on vinyl.

 

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ino

If its not printed you will not need a laminate. However if you,re still in doubt just get yourself some liquid laminate and brush it on.

 

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joeshaul

As ino said, laminating is mainly to provide extra UV/scratch resistance against solvent prints, when doing just cut vinyl it's not really necessary.

Given that it's in construction, it probably will see far worse weathering than normal circumstances however, and they will probably be quite brutal in cleaning the equipment. I would still offer to apply a cold laminate over top. I believe Fellers offers a variety for just cut media and not just ones for the print/cut market, but you will want to charge quite a bit extra for that service, as there's chance you could mess up the vinyl, not cut deep enough, etc. Also laminates are usually more expensive than the vinyl.

I wouldn't give them any long term warranty on the media given the nature of their business, so it'd probably be more feasible for them to just go with a high perf vinyl with no laminate and hope it lasts quite awhile, than to pay the extra costs for laminating (probably mark it up double or triple).


A liquid lam probably wouldn't help too much in the case of construction, the main thing I'd be worried about is the constant abrasion that it'd be under from constant pressure washing of the machine, contact with dirt, etc.

 

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