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How should I print this?

StickyBoyz

New Member
I need to wrap a racecar and I want to go with 3M IJ180CV3 due to the curves on the car. The problem is however, the wrap will be all black for the most part with a pattern going through it. Should I print on white vinyl and waste all of that ink or is there a better option to go around this?

I was looking into printing on black vinyl since the pattern is a charcoal. Has anyone printed on a 3M Black vinyl that works good?

Thanks for the advice. I want to do this right so I am curious how you pros would go about this!
 

astro8

New Member
No easy option. I could go into ways that you could do it, and why you can't print charcoal on black with a CMYK printer but only real way is to print on white.
 

gnatt66

New Member
a racecar? get it painted and print what you need printed...

i can't imagine many teams with the budgets to pay for a "true" all over wrap unless this is a drag car or something like that.

what kind of race car are we talking about?, i'm curious.
 

StickyBoyz

New Member
It my own race car I am wrapping for marketing purposes and to let you know many of the cars that I race against have full wraps.
 

bob

It's better to have two hands than one glove.
I need to wrap a racecar and I want to go with 3M IJ180CV3 due to the curves on the car. The problem is however, the wrap will be all black for the most part with a pattern going through it. Should I print on white vinyl and waste all of that ink or is there a better option to go around this?

I was looking into printing on black vinyl since the pattern is a charcoal. Has anyone printed on a 3M Black vinyl that works good?

Thanks for the advice. I want to do this right so I am curious how you pros would go about this!

If you're not printing some monochromatic job where the print is darker than the stock you print on white. Period. The only thing you can print on black media is black.

If you regard this as 'wasting' ink, you're not charging enough and/or you really don't understand printing.
 

signage

New Member
If you want to print on black vinyl, than a thermal printer is your answer! With thermal printing you can print a good white so you can achieve the other colors you are looking for!
 

StickyBoyz

New Member
Thanks for the feedback.

I will just print on white. I thought if I could save a little money for myself I would try to print on black but I see that is not a go. It's no big deal, I will just print on white and hopefully I don't burn through to much ink.

Thanks again!
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
At the shows.... the salespeople will tell you they ALL lay down opaque white. However, if you have a production type printer... I think it will lay down a good opaque white. The rest of them should accomplish what StickyB wants.
 

signage

New Member
Yea I know salespeople always tell you what you want to here or they think you want to here! A $150,000 plush machine probably will but the lower cost one I would want to see, the ones I have seen didn't!
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
To tell you the truth, at the Atlantic City sign show, I was looking at what they could do from flatbed to hybrids in the $70,000 range up to $250,000 range. There weren't too many displaying this feature, but they all said it was not a problem. I have a specific customer that needs light yellow printed on black PVC and every person told me no problem and with only one pass. How true it is... I don' know. Presently we screen print these and we can usually do it in one pass if we mix the ink properly, but that's getting old real fast. We've been doing it for over two years and the possibility of printing white looks better every time we do them. The samples show it can be done, but I don't know the actual procedure that was followed to get those results. Now, the lower end Rolands that had white heads also claimed they could do the job for me, but on black stock and then mount that to white PVC.... like that would be saving me money, but I'm still looking at one of the also. At this point, I can't make up my mind to spend or wait.
 

signage

New Member
Gino why don't you get one to print you an example/sample of the job you are looking to get it for! From what I was told they can print white but it is not that opaque and still isn't perfected yet! The other reason I would get sample is to check the longevity of the process, I have also heard that the white is not holding up that well under UV.
 
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