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Our first full wrap….
Having slowly built up our confidence doing a James deacon training course, a few "easy" jobs (flat paneled trailers) and plenty of car roofs, carbon bonnets ect, we decided to wrap our Vauxhall Combo van.
This was our first time printing on wrap vinyl and the first time we’d used our new Eastmount laminator with such thin vinyl.
The laminator was superb and ran without a problem.We used Arlon DPF6000RP and matching 3220 laminate (purely as it was on offer at the time from William Smith).
The vinyl really was nice to work with. the printed colours are really vivid and the 3220 laminate gives a nice gloss to the image.
For the roof of the van, we used APA Black Sparkle.The van was an absolute bugger to wrap!
It has sliding doors on both sides and each door has an inset panel (the van has rear seats but panels instead of windows). the back doors are the same 🙁
This meant there was so much cutting and all of it is pretty visible due to the profiles of the panel surrounds. My cutting technique has improved no end over the weekend!. (just a pity it wasn’t so good at the start of the job!)Despite all of the obstacles and the in-experienced fitter (me), the finish is actually pretty good. The only issues we had were pretty much all self inflicted (and are now stored in the memory bank, ready to be avoided on the next wrap)
My aim now is to try and gain some on the job experience from someone who has been wrapping for a while. If anyone wants a free helper for a day, please let me know 😀
I hope you like the pics!
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4 Replies
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wow…you have started a business wrapping whole cars and vans and this is the first you have done..I like the design work…whats in your portfolio?..Im nervous for you for some reason…this one looks good from the pics…like to see close up..I admire your confidence.
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Thanks for your comments Cheryl.
I’ve been wrapping as a hobby/side business since the beginning of the year and have now started a 3 man partnership with a couple of friends of mine who run a business producing commercial property signage.
Unfortunately I haven’t really had the time to concentrate on the wrapping as much as I’d have liked this year, which for me is a real shame as it’s the reason why I decided to try and get into the sign business.
I’ve always had a love of all things automotive and the wrapping is such a contrast to my main job (IT).The wrap was a bit ambitious 😀 but we looked at it this way – it’s our vehicle so if it all goes horribly wrong, we can take it off and put it down to experience.
The design was a group effort as we all had ideas on what to do…so we did them all 😀
We don’t really have a portfolio as most of the work we do is hoarding and for sale/to letbusiness park type signage. We do have lots of content on our facebook page though, mostly carbon bonnets, trailers and car interiors.You’re right though – up close there are a few imperfections and wrinkles and the cutting left a lot to be desired, although it improved during the install. (practice makes perfect) We also cocked up on scaling one of the panels, which resulted in a join across a panel 😳
We made a good recovery with a neat join/overlap but it was a lesson learnt – always doulde check the sizes!All in all, it’s been a very worthwhile experience for us. We made quite a few mistakes along the way but have learnt loads and have gained some really usefull hands on experience.
The van is presentable enough for us to have advertising our business and will hopefully generate further interest in the wrapping side.
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good for you Steve…it looks like a really professional outfit who knows what they are doing.
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Looks can be decieving 😀 (which is why I’ll be here asking loads and loads of questions)
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