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Advice / experience on joining wrap panels over a recess
After recently attending a very good course at the Roland Academy for vehicle wrapping, I must admit that I was shocked to hear that joining two panels of wrap across a recess (10 – 20mm in overlap) is not advisable and will ultimately fail.
This is where my problem lies. I only have the JV3 760, so I will not ever have the width to avoid these situations.
The tutor at the academy advised that I bought the wider format print in, which is a bit of a kick in the goolies after spending so much money last year to upgrade. I was not aware of this apparent problem and I really had done my homework!!
I wrapped a Vauxhall Courier Van about 4 months ago where my panels have joined over a recess and I keep going back every other week to look at it. As yet there is no failure.
The failure will, apparently, arise in any trapped air between the joining vinyl panels which will ultimately start to come away from the recess as the temperature of the van panels rises and falls during seasonal changes. I know that there was no air voids in the joining panels.
The courier van was ‘super heated’ after application and was completely prepped by myself, all the other conditions for application were met ie. good warm working environment, completely grease free, I even put a fan heater in the back of the van for an hour to heat the panels up.
I know there are a few others on here that have the same 760mm width digital printing machines and would love to hear from them about any advice or experiences they have with this.
Cheers
Craig
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14 Replies
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How exactly can you avoid joining panels in a recess? Are you sure he didn’t mean the corner sections of recesses?
I do think 760 wide printers are a waste of time for doing wraps though.
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No, not just the corners but any part of recess If I am correct James was the tutor, and he advised us the same on the grafityp course. To avoid the recesses just plan your print to tile between the panels where possible, or lay your material horizontal (you can get away with most panels with a 760 width this way,
I am no expert on the durability of wraps,,I have to rely on the professionals to give me the best advice based on their experience.
Peter
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Peter,
James was the tutor. Maybe a horizontal print is the solution. After all we all wrapped the smart cars horizontally.
Thanks for your reply.
Jon
760mm printers are great little devices but as I am trying to expand into different regions of the trade the limitations are becoming more apparent.
I am going to see how it goes and if I have to I will have to buy the print in, but if all goes well I will have to bite the bullet and expand to a wider machine.
Thing is though…
No matter how large or small your print is I cant see a way of avoiding joins in recesses. There are some vans out there that even the wide format printers will not be able to cover. But then again there is always the option of breaking down the print to avoid these issues.
Luckily for me my next wrap is my own van which has no recesses, nice one Citroen Dispatch 😀 😀
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that’s interesting that he’d tell you that 😮 , there are a lot of people successfully wrapping vans with the print vertically tilled.
what product are you using (?)
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Hi Craig. I may be wrong but what I heard from James is that in a MERCEDES SPRINTER (Old style) and famously the hardest recess to keep from popping out…Is the van not to fit vertical overlap into the recesses. Maybe in something like a combo you are not stretching the material to such a limit.
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plan to tile your prints horizontal…
so you can hide the visible overlapping from tiling in most cases.
you have to temper (min 80°C) all zones VERY careful.
don´t wait to long to heat it up to 80°C after applying.at each zone where more than 2 films (printed vinyl & laminat) are on top of each other, there is a risk! because the memory-effect is stronger.
i wrapped many cars with 76cm years ago… it works… but was more work.
wrap it!
-oliver- -
I will have to redo a sprinter next week due to the vinyl failing where the panels have been overlapped in the joins. This is an interesting thread as it is all starting to make sense now why this job failed in the first place.
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yes this is the area i take most time myself just where it’s going to join
always re-cast before the next tile is applied :bigwink:
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The overlap joins must be kept as small as possible (10mm or less) or they will fail every time. I have seen some vans with 50-60mm overlaps for some strange reason and they are failing all over the join or the vinyl is delaminating.
Ewan.
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anyone with a theory why this is happening to some people?
maybe not getting the right amount of heat when re-casting that section
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Many thank to you all taking the time to reply.
A bit of food for thought
Cheers
Craig
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When you guys say its failing is the overlap coming apart or its popping out of the recess?
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In our case the overlap is popping out of the recess in all the areas where there is a join.
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jayne did you re-cast each section as you put them on or did you recast it all at the same time?
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