• 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 ...

White Printer Vinyl Not Sticking to Aluminum Substrate

mwidmark

New Member
Hey guys!

I work for a company that makes aluminum ad panels and we have been having issues with our vinyl sticking to the metal. Currently we are using 3M IJ180C vinyl. We do many blank white ads and instead of painting them white we will cover the face with white vinyl. So the problem is that the white vinyl doesn't want to stick to the aluminum. Once the vinyl is printed on it will stick just fine though. For instance let says I were to print a Coca-Cola ad. The printed red would stick just fine but the white letters and white coke bottle will want to pull up with the application tape when we take it off. We recently switched printers also and the same issue keeps occuring so I don't believe it's heat settings or anything on the printer...

Right now we clean our aluminum first with RapidPrep followed by 70% isopropyl alcohol. I noticed recently that on the rapid prep bottle it says to leave it sit for 60 seconds then wipe it off, which we have not been doing, it seems to have helped some to let it sit, but i'm wondering if you guys have any other ideas. or how other people are cleaning their aluminum substrate. The aluminum is NOT painted by the way.

Anyhow any help or advice anyone could throw my way would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
 

AceSignsOnline

New Member
Strange... We just use denatured alcohol. I assume you're applying some good pressure to the vinyl? Maybe some post-heat would help? :/

(edited for typo due to caffeine overload)
 

MikePro

New Member
rapid/isopropyl might not be cutting through the oil that comes with most aluminum sheeting that keeps them from sticking together when stacked.

we clean our aluminum panels with paint thinner or denatured alcohol, after a light scuffing with a scotch pad to loosen things up, and give the aluminum some "tooth"
 

kanini

New Member
rapid/isopropyl might not be cutting through the oil that comes with most aluminum sheeting that keeps them from sticking together when stacked.

we clean our aluminum panels with paint thinner or denatured alcohol, after a light scuffing with a scotch pad to loosen things up, and give the aluminum some "tooth"


+1 to this, we also use paint thinner on very greasy aluminium, stinks but is needed to get good adhesion.
 

Turtle

New Member
We do quite a bit of aluminum fabrication. The fabrication guys use WD40 when they cut. They then clean the aluminum with thinner and when it comes to me I clean it with denatured alcohol.
 
Top