advice please on which vinyl to use on vehicles

[David Hammond]

What are you using as your ‘normal’vinyl?

Any reputable polymeric vinyl would suffice. I tend to use oracal 551.

[Nigel Barber]

At the moment i’m using ritrama monomeric and polymeric

[Jill Marie Welsh]

I only use cast vinyl on vehicles.
I’ve been taught that the more value your substrate, the better grade of vinyl.
I do Oracal 751 to 951.
Love…Jill

[Gary Birch]

We don’t even stock a monomeric vinyl, for the difference in cost we use polymeric for all. Apart from when a cast is needed that is.

Mainly Oracal 551, Metamark m7 though

Cheers

Gary

[Neil Davey]

We use polymeric 5-7 year on pretty much everything with great results.
We’ll use a cast where it’s needed but the majority of vehicle work we do is on flat panels.
We stick to pretty much 2 makes ImagePerfect and Metamark which I believe are much the same vinyl.
I buy 50m rolls too on most colours as this way I always have a good stock of material.
Personally I don’t think it makes sense for a small sign shop to stock shorter term vinyls as there’s not that much difference in cost.

[Robert Lambie]

quote Jill Marie Welsh:

I only use cast vinyl on vehicles.
I’ve been taught that the more value your substrate, the better grade of vinyl.
I do Oracal 751 to 951

Fair comment there Gill, nicely put. 😉

Oracal 551 is a great all rounder, but there is very little in cost o UKSG if you went up a level to house only 751.

the difference you will find in 751 is that it is a cast and can be a little more difficult to apply if not used to films like this.

Please dont think i am saying only Oracal is an option, its not, theres a great many great vinyls. its simply what we used daily for cut vinyl work.

[Allan Wilson]

quote Robert Lambie:

quote Jill Marie Welsh:

I only use cast vinyl on vehicles.
I’ve been taught that the more value your substrate, the better grade of vinyl.
I do Oracal 751 to 951

Fair comment there Gill, nicely put. 😉

Oracal 551 is a great all rounder, but there is very little in cost o UKSG if you went up a level to house only 751.

the difference you will find in 751 is that it is a cast and can be a little more difficult to apply if not used to films like this.

Please dont think i am saying only Oracal is an option, its not, theres a great many great vinyls. its simply what we used daily for cut vinyl work.

Robert, as a beginner in apply vinyl instead of paint and a user of 651 since its all i know, what difficulties do you mean when when using 751 or other cast vinyls over monomeric or polymeric?

[Chris Hansen]

It’s thinner and stretches more easily.

[Jill Marie Welsh]

and it conforms better to some of the curves on a vehicle.
And it lasts longer without fading or shrinking.
And Rob, for the love of God, it’s Jill!

[Robert Lambie]

quote Jill Marie Welsh:

And Rob, for the love of God, it’s Jill!

😳 :lol1: :lol1: :lol1: :lol1:

[Robert Lambie]

when normally using a slightly thicker film like 651 with a lower initial tack, it can be a bit daunting just jumping from one to the other.
Cast is a thinner vinyl and its initial tack is generally high, so its a bit of an unforgiving vinyl…
normal cry’s from folk making the move is its "crap" creates too many bubbles, creases and stretches too much. well, it does, "if applied wrong".
like everything, practice makes perfect and familurising yourself with the vinyl in question is the way to go. just the same thing as moving to vehicle wrapping, its just another step in the process of becoming a better vinyl technician/installer.

[Martin Pearson]

Just out of interest Nigel why do you use both of those? Not trying to put you on the spot or anything but knowing you are new to the industry just wondered where that sort of info had come from.

If your a small business then your outlay on stock could be quite large if your using different vinyls all the time. If you just stock a decent vinyl that will do most of the work you are likely to get then it helps to keep stock levels down or offer a better choice of colours off the shelf.
As others here I use mainly 551, covers pretty much everything I do, don’t have to worry about seeing those nasty dirty marks around graphics as it doesn’t shrink very much at all. Plus if a customer points to a colour on the rack I don’t have to try & explain to them that the colour they want isn’t available in the range I have to use for their job :lol1: :lol1:

I tend to use oracal vinyl because I always have, liked it when I started using it & now know exactly what I can & can’t get away with when fitting it. There isn’t a huge difference in price between 651 & 551 per metre so as pretty much all the work I do is one off vans or shops the difference in material cost for each job I do is very small.

If you have tried a few different brands & have decided that Ritrama suits you as a brand then you might want to look at keeping just a better quality polymeric in stock & use that for the majority of your work.

[Nigel Barber]

Hi all,
Firstly thanks for all your advice on this.
As a newbie i’m finding new bits of info but when stuck will ask, how else do you learn but from the jedi masters 😀

@Martin
The reason i use two types was when i bought my machine was sent a supply of vinyl with the offer, so have both on hand. Would you say that oracal is a good all rounder for vinyl uses over other brands, i know everyone has opinions on other brands, just want to use the best thats available that doesn’t cost the earth…

[David Hammond]

Oracal, avery, metamark are all good brands.

Get a few meters of each and see how they add to work with.

I use oracal as I can collect it from my local robert Horne free of charge. I find their colour range to be good, and prefer it over metamarks M7 which I sometimes found a little thicker but still good. Avery 700 is nice to work with but cost plm is a little more and there’s delivery too.

Once I get my storage sorted I will stock some 551.

My logic been best to use a better material than make do with an inferiror one.

[Martin Pearson]

Nigel, I doubt that Oracal is any better than a lot of other brands of vinyl but I can say that of all the brands I have tried I find it best suits my needs.

As David suggested you would be best to get some samples of different brands & try for yourself, you may find a different brand is better suited to your own needs.
I would look for samples of a good quality poylmeric vinyl such as oracal 551 & once you have decided which brand & range you want to use then start to build your core stock around that. You will find it covers the majority of the work you get asked to do & enables you to sleep at night knowing that there won’t be any come backs.

I was quite lucky because I was already using oracal vinyl when I became a UKSG member but I wasn’t getting as good a discount as I do now :lol1:

[Simon Worrall]

The one thing for me that makes Oracal stand out above the rest is that if you order 1220 wide you actually get 1260mm, and you can use four feet of vinyl and still have room for the pinch rollers.

[Chris Wool]

another view of oracal had to drop using the 751 metallics as they don’t last on a horizontal surface.
solid colours have been fine.

[Jill Marie Welsh]

I use Oracal and also Calon II from Arlon.
I have never had a failure with either (since 1998)
I also like the Gerber brand of vinyl but it’s really expensive.

[David Hammond]

Martin, I am now looking to carry some stock.

Out of curiosity what would you include in a core stock?

Would you stock 1220 & 610 rolls of each colour? And how many meters of each colour?

[Martin Pearson]

David, Thats a " how long is a piece of string" type question :lol1:

Think the answer is going to depend on a few different factors but for me most of the stock was 610 wide. Reason for that was that I found it to be far more cost effective to keep at that width for the work I was doing.
I generally only bought 1220 in when I needed it for a specific job where it was needed.
How much you can afford to have sitting on the shelf in stock & how much storage space you have will also be factors, As you can now buy short lengths as cheaply as a full log there is no saving to be made by having lots of 50 metre rolls on the shelf but you still need to carry enough for a couple of rush jobs so no point having lots of 1 metre lengths :lol1:
Colours I think will vary as well, having worked for a while I found that certain reds, blues, greens etc were more popular with people that others so I tended to buy those in longer lengths. I would build it up slowly anyway, not just go out & buy a lot of different colours.
I was going to say you need to carry black & white to start but strangely enough I found myself using less & less of it although I always bought it in either full logs or at least 25 metres at a time. What you stock from there is going to vary but I kept from memory at least a light & dark variation of Red, Blue & green, think there were 2 yellows, gold & silver a purple, orange to start with.
I made sure that I had enough of any specific colour for good regular customers but those also got used for other jobs. Use to do quite a bit of work for a guy that did MOT’s so always had traffic blue in stock even though it didn’t get used for much else.

I also had my own favourite shades when I was doing design work so if I was designing anything from scratch then I am sure they got used more than others lol

Like I said above, not sure there is a simple answer, don’t know how others do it but mine was based on my own observations of what people wanted.