As mainframe says, 3M's product is the industry standard for performance and application. That said, there are other less expensive alternatives such as the oracal 3551 (calendared) and Arlon 4560GTX (cast). What first must be looked at when comparing wrap materials is whether it is a cast (3M 180C) or calendared product and whether you are getting some type of air release in the material for when you squeegee it down to the vehicle surface. Most of my customers use 3M for their higher end jobs and vehicles that have complex contours but a few have gravitated over to the Mactac 2.1 Mil Cast product to take advantage of about a 15% savings over the 3M stuff.
As a rule of thumb, you should try to match up vinyls with the complexity of a job:
Cast for anything that includes contours, curves and channels
Calendared is usually OK for anything straight body or flat (including rivets).
Thought this from the Arlon website might help:
While DPF 4560 Series film may be used as a printed wrap material it must be recognized that calendered films are more susceptible to temporary ink/ solvent related softening and adhesion loss than are the more expensive and high performance cast materials. The condition of postprint softness etc. is only temporary however. Both film and adhesive recover after the solvents that carry digital inks are completely evaporated from the material.
Printing and Drying
When printing full color saturation the maximum amount of solvent (as the ink carrier) is being applied along with the ink. This solvent penetrates the vinyl and adhesive during and slightly after the print process, where it lingers until several hours of drying take place. Post print heaters will only dry the top layer of the print so it loses its tack and will not smear upon rolling and unrolling. To dry the ink, film and adhesive adequately requires a loosely wound roll or sheeted section to rest in a warm and dry environment for at least 12 hours. Often, when the humidity is high or the weather cool the time for drying must be extended another day or even two. To determine how well dried the product is one can pull back a section of printed film from the release liner and smell or stretch the film. If the smell of ink solvent remains strong or the film feels very soft allow the film to continue drying. Any additional heat and ventilation using warm fans will accelerate drying rate by at least double.
