Bus Wraps with UV ink... Anyone tried it?

[RoCo]

Just curious if anyone has tried a full bus wrap using a UV printer. I've wrapped a mile of vehicles from golf carts to 40'+ buses in the last 10 years or so, but it was all with solvent ink. I know the knock on UV ink is its flexibility so it not recommended for cars and van, etc. due to the compound curves.

But what about the sides of a bus - not just King and Queen ad panels, that wouldn't be a problem - but the entire bus. Logic and tells me that it's flat, so it should work fine. Experience tells me don't go wrapping a bus (or 4 in this case) if you are not absolutely sure what your material is going to do.

I would use 3M180C-10 with 3M 8519 laminate, which may even be overkill since the wraps will come off about once a quarter and be replaced with another.

Any advice? Anyone tried more than a king or queen panel?

 

[MachServTech]

It will work fine unless there are aggressive curves to be wrapped, as the UV ink does not stretch well without cracking under the laminate.

 

[National Sign Co. - Print]

Depending on what printer and ink you have the ink may be very flexible. We get 300% stretch in both directions using our QS3200R still would not do any full wraps though.

The problem lies in the lamination of UV curable prints and the silvering in prints caused by the dot gain of printing and the ink sitting on top of media and film lam going on top. Even if you heat the laminator up a bit the cast lam still will not conform to the ink and makes deep rich colors look like crap...

We have done many flat short term transit bus wraps with the QS3200R using 3M 3620 with UV curable liquid lam.

 

[RoCo]

The place that usually does these wraps uses liquid laminate to finish the solvent prints, and we basically can't touch their price (which I knew we couldn't). They're coming in at $5/sqft installed AND removed! I don't know how anyone does wraps anymore unless it's a fleet. Everyone has cut each other's throat over the last 10 years - not that I wanted to keep doing them anyway.