• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Gym Floor Graphics Help!

M

MANNING

Guest
My customer needs 2 logos . They also need team names 18" tall 2 color across the baseline. I would like to print these for saturday installation. they will be installed on a wood floor then cleared with a 2 part oil based clear.

any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Dale
 

signage

New Member
Well I did a search and found this one! Now did you try to do a search and see what has already been discussed about this? It has been brought up several time over the years, I do not have time to do your research!
 

Sandman

New Member
What you want to do is not going to work. I'm not sure about the 2 part urethane and it's adhesion to digital prints. In fact I talked to the court manufacturer and he said he'd never heard of a 2 part urethane for sport courts. Anyway, the adhesion of the urethane to the print is not the issue. The problem comes from the adhesion of the print to the floor. It is just not strong enough to hold up for any length of time. Trust me, we've tested it thoroughly and it won't hold up for even a year. The players pivoting on the graphic will make the vinyl adhesive fail, usually within months. Then the urethane top coat will crack and the whole thing will start peeling away. For temporary graphics, like what they use on the Final Four courts, (the company I deal with has made the NCAA Final Four courts for the past 2 years) they simply put a laminated graphic on top of the court and replace it when it gets damaged.

For permanent graphics you have to use paint and then urethane over the paint. We mostly use Poloplaz game floor paint which is a urethane paint formulated much like a primer for urethane. But One Shot with hardner will also work. I had to paint a metalic gold on the Boston Celtics court. Poloplaz does not make metalics so we used One Shot with the maximum recommended amount of hardner and it is holding up just fine. Much testing is done for adhesion qualities for Poloplaz paint tomake sure it will hold up with all the expansion and contraction, flexing, and players pivoting on the wood.

I know this is not what you wanted to hear, but it is what it is.
 

Graphics2u

New Member
I have been involved in doing something very similar for almost 10 years. We put printed \ laminated graphics on oak floors and then they are sealed under waterbased gym floor finish. Oil based finishes just will not adhere well to the vinyl. There is also a product called Tye-Cote that is put on the graphic before the finish is applied. I don't do the actual finishing but I am familiar with the process. Literally made thousands of 3' square graphics for this purpose and they are abused beyond belief. You may get a sharp point or something that can peel up but for the most part they hold up well. Infact if you ever want to peel one off the floor, just forget it, get a floor sander! I use Oracal 3651 and 210 lam.

We went through a tremendous learning curve to fine tune the process, so it can be troublesome. And trust me you will not find a manufacturer of vinyl or floor finishes that will reccomend this. None, anywhere!
 
Top