Circleville Signs
New Member
Just started on a 116 vehicle fleet job (removal and relettering). Pretty big job for my little shop. The vans in the job (87 of them) are old Econoline's, and the current vinyl that is there has been on anywhere from 3-10 years. No worries, or so I thought. I'll just zap the old stuff off...
We start working on one of the vans that has old vinyl. The zapper is NOT cleanly removing the vinyl AT ALL. I've never seen anything like it. Normally, it takes the vinyl and adhesive right off. On these vans, it is basically taking the majority of the vinyl off, but then smearing some of it into he old adhesive, and then smearing that around further. So, when I take off a 2'x4' section of blue lettering, there are just smears and streaks of blue tinted adhesive left over. Additionally, each one of these vans has probably 30 sf of actual vinyl that needs to be removed. I should be able to get 3 vans out of one zapper wheel. NOT ON THESE BAD BOYS!
Getting 1 van/wheel.
Anyone seen anything like this before? Am I better off using a steamer of some kind? I estimated being able to strip 2-3 vans/hour, and right now it is taking almost 90 min/van.
Any suggestions are welcome, as this job is going to crush my soul for the next 6 weeks if I can't figure out how to get back on track.
We start working on one of the vans that has old vinyl. The zapper is NOT cleanly removing the vinyl AT ALL. I've never seen anything like it. Normally, it takes the vinyl and adhesive right off. On these vans, it is basically taking the majority of the vinyl off, but then smearing some of it into he old adhesive, and then smearing that around further. So, when I take off a 2'x4' section of blue lettering, there are just smears and streaks of blue tinted adhesive left over. Additionally, each one of these vans has probably 30 sf of actual vinyl that needs to be removed. I should be able to get 3 vans out of one zapper wheel. NOT ON THESE BAD BOYS!
Getting 1 van/wheel.
Anyone seen anything like this before? Am I better off using a steamer of some kind? I estimated being able to strip 2-3 vans/hour, and right now it is taking almost 90 min/van.
Any suggestions are welcome, as this job is going to crush my soul for the next 6 weeks if I can't figure out how to get back on track.