Printed vehicle wraps are the most common type of ute wrap or van wrap today in the vehicle signage world.
The inks used to produce the printed wrap have been developed over many years and have improved significantly over that time to be better for the environment, last longer, give better colour and can be stretched with the vinyl wrap.
There are three types of inks generally used for printed signage, solvent based ink, latex based ink, and UV cured ink.
UV inks are commonly used in flat panel applications rather than vehicle wraps so we won’t talk too much about them now.
Traditionally, solvent based inks have been used for vehicle wraps. They use a solvent to carry the ink particles to the vinyl and are a very reliable and robust ink. They have been used for many years in the signage industry and still account for a large part of the inks used, albeit a more environmentally friendly eco-solvent ink.
The key to getting the best result out of solvent inks is allowing them to ‘outgas’ for an appropriate period. Outgassing is the process of hanging or standing a solvent (or eco-solvent) print for a period to allow the solvents to fall away from the print before laminating. This can take anywhere from 24 hours to several days to occur. Laminating a print before it has shed its solvents can cause a failure later, as the solvents try to escape from the adhesive side of the print once installed, reducing the life of the print.
More recently, latex based inks have hit the market, they use a latex compound to carry the ink to the print which is dried by high temperature heaters as the vinyl exits the printer, this allows a latex print usable straightaway as there is nothing that needs to outgas - it can be laminated and applied as soon as the print is finished.
Latex based inks take away one of the most common causes of wrap failure by removing the human-error possibility of failing to outgas for long enough.
At Tradie Wraps, we only use latex printing for our car wraps as we believe it gives us the most consistent result. Hopefully this has given you a bit more understanding about the different inks available to print a vehicle wrap and will help you choose what is best for your vehicle.
©Tradie Wraps™ 2022
