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  • Truck Curtain Vinyl, views and recomendations please?

    Posted by Peter Cassidy on May 15, 2021 at 9:12 pm

    I am looking for a bit of advice but also views on this vinyl if anyone has used it.

    I have three large curtain sided trucks to do and I haven’t had very much experience with the banner type PVC curtains. Normally I would not get involved in this but it is for a large customer of mine and I get the cabs and rear to do also. so it is a pretty big deal for me.

    I have come across the following truck curtain vinyl and intend to make some calls on Monday regarding it.
    https://www.mactacgraphics.eu/en/product/macal-truck-tarp
    Has anyone used this stuff and what are their thoughts?

    There is another I have seen on this site but i can’t find it, can anyone recommend any other curtain sider types of vinyl?

    thanks for any help!

    Peter Cassidy replied 3 years, 9 months ago 5 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • RobertLambie

    Administrator
    May 16, 2021 at 5:39 am

    I was not aware of Mactac having a truck vinyl for curtains. Thanks for the link, Peter! 👍

    I have just read the spec, 6 standard colours and also a specific matt laminate for prints.

  • David Hammond

    Member
    May 16, 2021 at 7:34 am

    I don’t know the Mactac product, and I’ve not used the APA truck vinyl, we stencilled and screen inked the last curtains we did.

    However I do know that the APA film requires PVC curtains, and some of the new curtains don’t have enough to form a bond, from memory the adhesive reacts with the PVC curtain to bond.

  • Chris Wilson

    Member
    May 16, 2021 at 8:31 am

    We came up against this issue recently. David is correct, APA film needs to be 100% PVC. We had a curtain made from sion. Looks and feels the same to me but there was no guarantee. We had a test but explained to the customer it could last forever or next week it will be in a bad state and they decided not to go ahead and just signwrite rest of the cab and back sliding door. So can’t comment if it would work. They had a printable range, which we would of used to match a Avery supreme colour they use for the rest of the fleet and I think a fairly large range of colours, more than I was expecting anyway of memory serves.

  • Neil Davey

    Member
    May 17, 2021 at 12:21 pm

    I would use APA truck curtain vinyl (I wasn’t aware of the PVC/SION issue though so thanks Chris) so obviously check first!!

    Or you can mask and paint with screen ink, I use Apollo Inks and Metamark Blue mask.

    • Chris Wilson

      Member
      May 17, 2021 at 7:22 pm

      To be fair there could be no problem at all. I called Kim at APA to find out all the details and she mentioned it needed to be 100% PVC, so I went back to the customer and it was sion, so I went back to Kim and they had not come across it so kindly sent a sample in the post, but I played it down/talked the customer out of it really. We get a fair bit of work out of them monthly, didn’t want to risk a wee fall out or lose a bit of confidence in us over one truck.

  • RobertLambie

    Administrator
    May 18, 2021 at 11:51 pm

    If ever in doubt, use ink!
    I used to ink curtains for as long as I can remember.
    I would cut a stencil in oracal paint mask and use a 4 inch short hair roller with apollo inks.
    you require very little ink at all, mixed with thinners.
    We have a spray room setup too, we used to spray all our banners with ink and letter.
    obviously, this was long before digital printers came along and these new curtain materials.
    but never ever did I have a fail or a concern after ink’ing a truck curtain.
    http://www.apolloinks.com/

  • Peter Cassidy

    Member
    May 19, 2021 at 11:21 am

    Thanks very much for all the replies, very helpful indeed.
    based on what has been said here, i think i need to ask a few questions on the truck curtain itself. always good to learn new things! 😀

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