Archive for February, 2010

Face-up Decals

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

The term decal is the abbreviated form of the word decalcomania. The invention of taking artist rendering from canvas and printing these images onto a medium to decorate ceramic pieces attributed to Simon Francois Ravenet. Simon was from France, he was an engraver who immigrated to England, and after arriving in England circa 1750, he perfected this transfer process he called decalcomania.

 

In the 1950’s plastic substrates such as vinyl, Mylar’s, polyesters, Lexan, were coated with an adhesive and the pressure sensitive decal was invented. The white and yellow tinted vinyl is used to print decals using the screen printing process. To learn more about screen-printing read my post at http://www.decalfactory.com/wp-index.php/2009/12/  What are water slide-off decals?

There are two types of decals known in the screen-printing industry jargon as face-up and facedown decals. The facedown decals I will explain in another article. The face-up decal refers to a decal that is printed on top of a semi-opaque substrate with adhesive on the underside of the film.

 

The face-up decal can only be affixed to the outside of windows, doors, lockers, toolboxes, notebooks, or any other surface. The benefit of using vinyl as the medium to print your decal on; the white vinyl saves money because the printer does not have to print white; because they use the color of the vinyl is white.

Why is this important? Because 90% of all decals have white in the design, so using white vinyl reduces the number of colors to be printed. The second most common background color used for decals is yellow. When a decal has a yellow background using a yellow vinyl will save money because the printer does not have to print yellow and white is not a part of the decals design.

Many of you do know that there are many other colors of vinyl, blue, green, red, gold, silver, etc, etc. Most screen-printers do not print decals using these other colors, because the printer would have to back all the printing in white, thereby costing more to print the decal. Most of these other vinyl colors are used to create thermal die cut decals; to learn more about these types of decals read my post on, “What are Thermal Die Cut Decals” http://www.decalfactory.com/wp-index.php/2009/10/ .

 

Printing spot colors on white and yellow vinyl’s works very well except when printing of a blue on a yellow vinyl will produce a green color not the blue that was designed. When the screen-printer prints a CMYK design, the only color vinyl they can use is white vinyl. Printing CMYK on a yellow vinyl is not advisable because the yellow background will defeat the CMYK effect. For more information on spot and CMYK printing see my article titled” C.M.Y.K. or Spot Colors in Printing” http://www.decalfactory.com/wp-index.php/2010/02/ .

Clear Mylar or clear and white polyesters could be used to print face-up decals, but on the clear substrates, the printer would have to print white. The white polyesters could be used, but is not used very often because the cost of the substrate is higher than white vinyl. White polyesters are used in environment needs the substrates heat resistant properties.

The face-up decal is the most widely used decal construction by far; the distant second is the facedown decal. The reason for using the facedown decal is another article.

 

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

Posted in Decals | 69 Comments »

C.M.Y.K. or Spot Colors in Printing

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

The theory of color is very scientific, but I will not be presenting a scientific answer to what is color. I will be exposing how colors are used in the printing industry. In addition, what the acronym C.M.Y.K. means and how it is different from spot color printing.

I cannot define color without mentioning that without light color is not seen. You can prove this by trying to see color in a dark room or a dimly light room. A thumbnail sketch of this truth is the color we see is a reflection of a particular wavelength of light. The color red reflects the red wavelength of light therefore, you see the color red, and this process expresses each color.  

We will begin with the simplest explanation first; printing with spot colors. The term spot color describes the process a printer uses to print an image using 100% color. If a decal or a label needs to be printed with red and blue, the printing manufacturer would mix a color that is 100% blue and red. These colors are separate from each other and are not mixed on the substrate to make a third color.

Spot color printing is straightforward and not complicated there are some exceptions, like when you overlap transparent colors to make a third colors. Most of us have experimented with this when we were children when we used crayons coloring one color on top of another color to make a third color. The artist who paints in water, or oil colors use this process on the canvas or on their palette.

The more complex printing method is what is known as four-color process, which is printed using C.M.Y.K. This acronym C.M.Y.K. is the abbreviation of the colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Cyan is blue, Magenta is red, Yellow of course is yellow, and Black is black. Sometimes these colors also known by their Pantone equivalents; process blue, process red, process yellow and process black.

The four-color process method of printing uses these four colors, by printing dots of each color on the substrate. Each dot of color is printed next to one of the other four colors at a predetermined distance and angle. The light reflecting from each color dot mixes together so the observer see the color that was intended for that area of the image.

The four-color process color theory is utilized in various and unrelated technologies. Television uses this same theory, your color printer, any picture you take with a color film camera or a digital camera, magazines, you can add to this list by looking more closely.

How can you tell if I am telling you the truth? Next time you look at a magazine picture or the digital picture you printed look closer by using a magnifying glass to observe to image. The magnifying glass allows you to see the dots of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black that make up the image.

It must be noted in closing black is the absence of color and is used in this process as a definer or shadows. The color white is a combination of all the colors, and usually four-color process method of printing is printed on top of a white background.

I leave you with a question why is DPI or Dots per Square Inch important in the four-color process method of printing?

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

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Posted in Decals, Four-Color Process | 22 Comments »

Lexan and Polycarbonate Decals

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

Decals manufactured using various types of materials and each material has unique properties that make the material the right choice for a particular application.

Lexan a brand of hard, practically unbreakable polycarbonate resin, used for shatterproof windows and the like.  Lexan is the brand name of this plastic resin, the generic term is polycarbonate. Polycarbonate used in many industries e.g. windows, but most notability the material is used as bullet resistant shields.

The Lexan material used by banks and convenience store establishments in high crime neighborhoods is the same material utilized by decal manufactures. The bullet resistant shield varieties of Lexan are up to three inches thick. The material properties that allow polycarbonate to stop bullets makes the 5, 10, 15 millimeters thick film a very tuff decal.

The polycarbonate film used by the printing manufacturers to produce decals usually does not come with adhesive. The adhesive applied to the film after the Lexan is printed. The most common polycarbonate known as suede or velvety texture, surface that causes the film not be optically clear. There is also an optically clear version, which is not used very often, in the printing industry, because polycarbonate scratches easily, therefore the suede surface hides any scratches.   

Polycarbonate printing grade films are usually printed using the screen print type of printing. This product can also be printed using other printing methods, when the product is treated to receive the different types of inks that the other printing methods employ.

The screen printing company prints the desired logo, graphic, or other images on the Lexan’s side that does not have the rough texture. When the printing is completed, the manufacture then laminates an adhesive over the printed image thereby sandwiching the printing between the polycarbonate film and the adhesive.  

The adhesive the manufacturer laminates onto the Lexan film known as transfer adhesive. Transfer adhesives come in many different varieties each variety produced with specific application conditions considered. The most widely used transfer adhesive products laminated to the Lexan by the printing manufacturers. These transfer adhesives known by the part numbers 468 and 467 and are manufactured by 3M.

When the polycarbonate decal is mounted to its intended surface the decals image is safely under the Lexan film out of reach of any abrasive forces. This decal once pressed into service will last for years if not decades. This construction allows these types of decals to be used in extreme conditions such as, hot and cold weather, or in abrasive conditions of heavy machinery and on the oily dirty conditions of a factory floor.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

Posted in Decals | 48 Comments »