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Exhibition vinyl on painted walls.
Hi
Can any body direct me to a decent low cost temporary vinyl that is easy to remove but doesnt fall off painted walls or curl up at the edges – for an art gallery exhibition?
I have been using Digitac, sold exactly for this purpose, and perhaps the cheapest vinyl available in the southern hemisphere. Prints beautifully, and sticks well to most things, but it just doesnt like painted walls. And we have had a few issues with some installs curling at the edges –
I am willing to go to 2x the price for something reliable, but the gallery doesnt want the aggressive adhesive vinyls for temporary exhibitions, and anyway the arlon 8000 is nearly 4x the price.Thank you.
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5 Replies
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It’s in the prep. We change shows every 6-8 weeks, and some of the artists want to change the wall colour away from a light grey, so often a few coats of dark low VOC paint and only a week or two to turn the shows around. Lots of ventilation to dry the walls (I tell them at least a couple of weeks). Then follow the IPA/water 50/50 mopping protocol.
Then a few more coats to switch back to pale neutral. Then follow the IPA/water 50/50 mopping protocol.
If someone has painted with an easy clean emulsion, then they’re in for a world of pain, as the paint normally has silicon or ptfe built into it, and you’ll be lucky to get a high grab vinyl to take it.
Our walls are mdf, and we use Leyland trade vinyl matt. We can get non-agressive canon ijm538 to hang a couple of days after painting, but we ventilate, and do three reps of the IPA mop protocol. We don’t post heat, and where the works are not laminated, we apply with a minimum of pressure, to avoid scuffing the prints
Temperature has an impact -below 10degreesC, it gets dodgy. IJM538 is cheap (for aqueous), and little different from the cheapest generic materials we have tried (but has a slightly better colur gamut)
I’ve only had one failure (after using the ipa/water x3 protocol), and that was on what should have been a well cured solvent painted wall. There was a cold water riser to the building directly behind the wall. But I’d not expect that in a gallery. No amount of scuffing, IPA, heat worked. So we redesigned the graphic, and avoided the problem.
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How about a digital printable self adhesive wall paper? After all paper has been used on walls for decades and easily removed. I think we are all conditioned to think of vinyl 1st
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Graham, do you know if these are using a different adhesive, from that used with vinyl, or whether the porosity of the paper stops the out gas from causing problems?
I’d love to get away from vinyl for the shows where we currently use it (though 80% has a now discontinued DryTac satin matt laminated, that gets the images to nigh on photographic). After Rob suggested it a while back, it’s been on my list of things to try.
For an art show, my concern would be the risk of the print bruising during application, though I guess that a roller could be used in place of a squeegee.
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Hi Richard,
Paper needs a less technical adhesive due to its stability, it doesn’t stretch or shrink like vinyl does. After all, wall paper paste is a water based adhesive. Most papers are aimed at the latex or uv printer market therefor offering a tough finish and easy application, eco solvent would need a coated paper as to stop the ink soaking into the paper and keep the print vibrant and in this case may suffer from durability issues on application. Eco solvent inks love pvc
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I’d thought about the dimensional stability of the paper, but being still aqueous based, I’d forgotten that other ink sets have their majical properties.