Low tac vinyl for auto body applications

[Ricoturbo 0]

I am interested in purchasing a vinyl plotter to use in my body shop. Any others out there with any wisdom to pass on? Model, size, material? Any help would be great

[Ravenwind / One Off Grafx 187]

You need to go into a bit more detail on how you will use it. I bought mine to Airbrush with  and do a few decals for cars. Now i am doing full cars, airbrushing, sandblasting, glass etching, signs, and a ton more.

[Ricoturbo 0]

Laying out graphics and or lettering. Be it a current customer that wants his Hellcat have some lettering or flames or.....anything. I have never used these products but my painter has suggested i start looking into it if I am going to be doing custom work. 

[MZ SKEETER 4,709]

It all depends on your budget, on which cutter to get..  They all cut vinyl.. Some cutters go from headaches to professional accurate cutters.  Stepper motors to servo motors.  Here is the buying guide. But I would stay away from the MH series,  Too many complaints.

 

http://www.uscutter.com/index/page/static/subpage/buying_guides_new

[jmas 119]

I'm a body shop guy. I highly recommend a cutter with a servo motor such as a Graphtec. 24 inches is the standard size unless you think you'll be working with box trucks a lot or something. For material, you'll want to use Oracal 751 or 951 (or the equivalent in other brands).

 

A servo motor is more expensive but they can cut with more detail. As a rule of thumb, a stepper motor can cut a letter 1/2 inch tall but probably not much smaller while a servo motor can cut things much smaller than that. A stepper might be fine for racing stripes and other large designs, but you'll find yourself wanting to cut things smaller. I'm working on two lettering jobs tonight, one is a few words of text that is less than 1/4 tall. The other is a Bible verse for a Harley saddle bag where the text is clear coated over. The text is about 1/2 tall but the verse number at the bottom is 5/16ths. On both jobs, I'm just replacing things that are already on the vehicle where we have to repair. Neither are very glamorous, and neither are what you get a cutter for, but when you have a cutter, you will keep finding little things like that to do. All told, I'm making $50 and the shop is making $50 for what amounts to 20 minutes of work and $1 of vinyl.

 

That said, this is the kind of thing you will have to find interesting enough to learn. It's not hard, but it will take a little learning to do more than simple lettering, and if it doesn't look fun, you might be wasting your money. You can always have a local sign shop make things for you and you can mark it up. That's what we used to do until the sign shops in the area kept going out of business.

[dirtrocker 60]

Interesting that folks are recommending Oracal. 

I only use Oramask 810 or 813 for my airbrush work.
I have used FDC mask vinyl for acrylic or urethane, as I sometimes will force dry it and it holds well to the heat.

 

For the most part, I'm using waterbased (AutoAir) airbrush paint and acrylic or urethane for striping and larger stuff.

 

[Wildgoose 4,200]

I don't think some really understood what he wants to do. dirt rocker is right, for painting stencils you don't need the actual vinyl when the Oramask or others are made to do it. I'm not a painter so I have no experience with this. 

[Moody Blue 505]

If you are looking for low tac vinyl I would suggest the Avery SW900 or 3M 1080. Both have a "temporary" adhesive for doing car wraps. Its a good bit thicker than your regular vinyl and much easier to remove being that it wont leave residue and for the most part should peel in large sheets as opposed to tearing like regular vinyl. You can cut it with just about any plotter with a little more cut pressure than your Oracal 751 or 951 which is also great for vehicle graphics. If using like a paint mask check out some of the actual paint mask vinyl. It is even less tacky than the wrap vinyl so you wont want to use that for decals that will stay like like you can any of the others types.