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is decolit the be all in banner product for retractables?

gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
I think I have to move to this product for certain types of printing.

I use a premium non curl banner material currently but the quality control in manufacture is questionable, especially on full colour banners. Not always, but enough times have found strange patterns occuring under full colour prints. Things like swirls or what looks like overspraying which I know is not a printer error seem to occur.

I have ordered a roll of Decolit, but wonder is it the be all end all?

I will use it for full colour prints and use my pet 15oz for banners that have more white in them.

Wit the Decolit do I need to laminate?
 
MontereySigns

MontereySigns

New Member
Retractable banner and Pop-Up banner material

We like a product called Xign for these displays. It is printable both sides, has light blockout, no curl, and nice matte finish. It works really well in every retractable I have installed it on.

-Bud
 
C

CanuckSigns

Active Member
We only use decolit for our pop-up banner stands, we tried a few others and weren't as happy as we were with the Decolit.

All Graphics has a Rite-Media product that competes with decolit, but the last roll I got stuck to itself on the roll in a major way and jammed my printer as a result (you get what you pay for)
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
watsons signs said:
We only use decolit for our pop-up banner stands, we tried a few others and weren't as happy as we were with the Decolit.

All Graphics has a Rite-Media product that competes with decolit, but the last roll I got stuck to itself on the roll in a major way and jammed my printer as a result (you get what you pay for)
Click to expand...

quick question, I picked it up at ND and now it looks sort of fabricy. I can see a pattern in the material. I hope they gave me the right stuff. Also do you print on the outside of the wind or the inner roll?
 
Tim Kingston

Tim Kingston

New Member
watsons signs said:
We only use decolit for our pop-up banner stands, we tried a few others and weren't as happy as we were with the Decolit.

All Graphics has a Rite-Media product that competes with decolit, but the last roll I got stuck to itself on the roll in a major way and jammed my printer as a result (you get what you pay for)
Click to expand...

Same here, decolit has a "grain" to it but prints beautifully for banner stands. The Rite media stuff looks great too but I have to baby it. I won't even try to print it on our print and cut (Roland SC-545-ex). It wrinkles very easily. I run it through the Roland SJ640 ( full width rollers ) with the media take-up and it stays flat but unless I slow the head down quite a bit and let it dry ( heating causes wrinkles ) I get a chalk like deposit from the backing of the Rite Media stuff ) It's too bad because the print quality is very nice and the silvery backing looks really nice.

We have used other, thicker matte banner materials with good success but the decolit print quality is the best I've seen. The one thing I don't like is the amount of show through. You can see the shadow of the banner stand pole in bright lit situations ( from the front with light ink coverage).

I think you can print on either side according to the website specs but I print on the outside. Tim
 
Rooster

Rooster

New Member
ND has a better product that's a 7 mil film with a matte gray backing. It provides an excellent print surface, won't curl and is designed especially for roll-ups. They have a 15 mil film of the same stuff for pop-up displays.

I've tried it and it's great. No lamination required and it has a slight pebble texture. I've got a roll of the decolit stuff too, which is also a great product, but not as good as this stuff for banner stands.
 
P

PromoGuyTy

New Member
pop up from fellers

we use POPUP from Fellers...and like it a lot...have done maybe 30 or 40 retractors total with it
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
Rooster said:
ND has a better product that's a 7 mil film with a matte gray backing. It provides an excellent print surface, won't curl and is designed especially for roll-ups. They have a 15 mil film of the same stuff for pop-up displays.

I've tried it and it's great. No lamination required and it has a slight pebble texture. I've got a roll of the decolit stuff too, which is also a great product, but not as good as this stuff for banner stands.
Click to expand...


are you saying Decolite is not designed for banner stands. I was made to think it is the one and only.

Well I printed a navy blue banner with gold lettering and my thoughts on the material are this. It cuts very strangely, sounds like a ripping sound as an olfa goes through it.
I put it in the retractable and all went well and then thought I would set it up and look at it.
I can see this is a very nice non curl material but 2 things I noticed.
1) even with a dark print I can see the damn pole from behind... WTF?

2) I see some strange shapes in the print which turn out to be some sort of slight imprint in the material, maybe from being rolled up or hell I dont know.

My thoughts are this.... I need a material that prints great, does not curl and definately does not show the pole image bleeding through the print from behind. Bloody frustrating this stupid business.
Now I will call ND and see if they have an opaque version which should have been offered to me origianlly as I told them I need it for retractables.
Fak!~~
 
S

SignMedic

New Member
Decolit has a Black Back option for their Stay Flat Material.
Decolit-251-10oz-Exhibit STAY FLAT(FR) BLACK BACK-35"x82' , its available at All Graphic Supplies. I have used it, and had some really good results. I have a customer that used to buy the laminated banner product, and always had issues with curl. After I introduced this product(decolit), she told me it was the best banner stand she has ever had. I should also say that she was so impressed... that she referred a new customer to me, that ended up buying 16 units.
 
G

genericname

New Member
gabagoo said:
quick question, I picked it up at ND and now it looks sort of fabricy. I can see a pattern in the material. I hope they gave me the right stuff. Also do you print on the outside of the wind or the inner roll?
Click to expand...

Ferrari hasn't admitted to it, but the formula for Decolit has definitely changed. Before, it didn't really matter which side you printed on, though they recommended the outer side of the roll. Now there's a definite difference between the two, and for months I struggled with tweaking old profiles, getting all kinds of stippling in my blacks, and having oversaturation issues. Never changed anything but profiles, thinking I had screwed up somehow, because they kept telling us nothing had changed.

Just for the hell of it, switched to printing on the inside one day, and voila, profiles worked fine. Great product, just not happy with being made to assume I'm crazy.
 
Rooster

Rooster

New Member
ND's name for the 7 mil product is polybrite rollup. They have a 15 mil product called polybrite popup which is suitable for you guessed it.... pop-up displays.

Cost is about 80¢ a square foot so it's cheaper than the decolit/ferrari from ND, which comes in higher for my account anyhow. I've used the decolit stuff before for some high quality fireproof banners and it looks great. I get good color saturation and it truly lays flat. The polybrite is just that much better for the roll up stands with no chance of the edges fraying after being rolled up and down a few times. Plus I like the gray backing on it. It gives the final product a more finished appearance.
 
G

genericname

New Member
Dang, none of the suggested alternatives come in 98" wide.

To keep on topic, and answer a previously unanswered question from Gabagoo, I've heard of people adding lam to decolit, though we've never done it. Our display systems aren't self-rolling, or have metal enclosures though, so you'd have to try pretty hard to damage the print.
 
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