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3ml calendered cutting vinyl vs 3ml calendered digital vinyl

gabagoo

New Member
I have made this observation about the calendered vinyl we use in the shop.

For the most part when it comes to cutting vinyl I use many different brands, but usually buy full rolls of black and white from a dealer that sells General Formulations. I have always liked using this vinyl and it holds up well.

I do however have an issue with white. It's nice that it comes on the blue background, but the weeding can be tedious at times.

Have a customer that orders vinyl cut letters to put on the equipment they sell. They really like the look of cut vinyl over a printed decal.

they might order 200 or 400 at a time and most of the time they want white. The logo is just like a Bodoni typestyle that has been boldened up a bit and is only 7 letters. I generally cut quite a few extras as the weeding will always ruin quite a few. This week they ordered a smaller version about 8" wide and the height would have been around an inch. I ran a test cut in the 3ml white and it weeded well enough. After they were all cut, the weeding was far worse than I anticipated and many of them were getting ruined.

I considered recutting the whole lot but even a 2ml can present problems with a serif font like that.

I had a scrap of general Formulation Calendered digital vinyl and I ran 3 or 4 to see how they weeded. I tell you this.... I will not hesitate to use this product in the future for all white cutting as the weeding was a charm. Not one letter lifted and the processing time was cut down considerably. The only drawback is that it does not have the blue background.

So I sit here pondering how is it that 2 calendered vinyls from the same mfg can react so differently after being cut? Now the kicker is that a full roll of 48" cut vinyl is about $200.00 and the digital premium calendered from the same mfg is $159.00 for 54".

I know which white I will be using in the future..
 

eahicks

Magna Cum Laude - School of Hard Knocks
I know what you mean. I primarily use Oracal 651 for standard cut decals, but recently needed some large window graphics, all white. Instead of cutting from 30", in tiled sections, I used my roll of 3M IJ-35 C. It cut superbly, and obviously, install was 10x easier since it is air release. And at .25 per sf for IJ-35, versus like .32 per sf for Oracal 651, I may just start cutting all white from it.
 

SameDay Signs

New Member
We use our Avery air release vinyl on almost anything white that we are doing as long as it is not vehicles. Haven't had a problem yet
 
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