Mr. Decal's Blog

I want to thank all the contributors for their comments about my blogs. When a writer expresses their knowledge on a subject or in this case an industry, the writer hopes he connects with the reader. More to the point, this writer writes these blogs hoping to inform and educate  people about the printing industry.

The printing industry is one of top five industries in the world, as a whole, and all of us are influenced and impacted by this industry. The printing industry provides us access to news, information, and advertisements taking such forms as newspapers, magazines, posters, flyers, and yes decals.

I do understand that some of the printed mediums noted above are evolving into electronic forms of news and information outlets moving away from a physical newspaper or magazine. Nevertheless, to say printing is a dead industry would be an over-statement, because printing a physical product will always be with us into the near future.

Printing is very much a part of our daily lives, and the majority of us do not know the technology of the various printing processes available today. The question I need to answer should each consumer have an intimate knowledge of the printing processes that we purchase. No, I do not believe that is necessary, but as a consumer who purchases printed products for their businesses, however, it is important to have a thumbnail sketch of what process of printing to utilize, because the lowest prices should not be our only criteria of what product to purchase.

I highlight this idea of the need to have at least an armchair understanding of the benefits or disadvantages of different methods of printing. From my 33 years of experience of printing decals and labels, for industrial uses or promotional advertising of a company’s brand, I have seen many requests for products asking for the wrong printing method, for the intended use of the product.

I will emphasize this idea with a question. Have you ever purchased a decal when a label would have sufficed and conversely, have you ever purchased a label, but found out you needed a decal?

During the 33 years, I have manufactured and sold decals and labels, many customers purchased products that did not fit the intended use of the product. Some said, I purchased this decal for my company and it faded to white in one month’s time. Upon examining the product they purchased they had bought a label intended for inside use not fit for sun light exposure. The sales person who sold this item did not explain this disadvantage. We as a company believe we have a fiduciary responsibility to educate our customers on the best product to use for the intended purpose of the product.  

The purchasing manager does not need to have the expertise I have on the subject of how a decals or labels are printed. However, my hope is that I can educate those who read my blog post that there are different uses for a decal vs. a label. This is why my blog post I do not give opinions, but my hope is to inform my readers by explaining how printing works, by pulling, back the curtain exposing the wizardry of the printing process.

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 are printed on a clear substrate, such as clear Mylar or clear polyester. Polyester is the generic name of the brand name Mylar.

Clear polyester is manufactured also with a white adhesive, and is metalized to create silver and brushed polyester also known as chrome or brushed silver polyester. Clear polyester can also be metalized using a matte silver finishes and can be metalized to gold shinny surface or a gold-brushed finish. The history of metalized polyester I will discuss in another article.

Now back to the facedown decal, which is printed, on clear polyester with the graphics printed in reverse. Example of this if a decal design calls to print red, yellow and white the face-up decal would print the yellow and the red the white provided by the white vinyl. The facedown decal printed on clear polyester the yellow, red and white would be printed to create a white background for the other colors. Sometimes white is not used in the design of a facedown decal, and some facedown decals use white but only to outline the copy of the design thereby leaving the background of the decal clear.

When viewing the face-up decal the image is a positive image, the facedown decal is a reverse image only be rightly be viewed through the outside of a window. Because the facedown decal mounted on the inside of a window, this type of decal design is not very popular. Since most windows of cars, storefronts, or homes are highly tinted, the tinting mutes the facedown decal message, and therefore the intended message is not be seen easily.  

The facedown decal is widely used when printing static cling decals. Almost every static cling decal printed on clear static cling to be mounted on the inside of windows because on retail store window the decal mounted on the outside can be removed by anyone. The static cling mounted on the outside of a moving vehicle will blow off because of the wind created. Therefore, the facedown static decal is used to mount on the inside of the window.

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

Static Cling Decals ~ Ultra Removable Decals

There are many different types of materials that can be printed on to manufacturer a decal or a label. The environment the decal or label will be subject to guides the choice of a particular substrate. If the reader needs to know what the terms decal and label means read my previous post at; http://www.decalfactory.com/wp-index.php/2009/09/ titled: Decals and Labels, what is the difference?   

The static cling material clings to windows, glass, or any high polished surface because of the static charge the material naturally possesses. Before static cling materials, where used as a decal or label the static electrical charge of the vinyl was a problem.

 Screen printers that print onto the adhesive backed vinyl their number one dilemma was the static electric charge inherent in the vinyl. The static charge would cause the vinyl material to adhere to each other making it difficult to separate the sheets. Many products invented to address this problem, some by research teams, and some by the companies press operators.   

Then a material manufacturer or a printer that is not truly clear who invented the idea of using this product’s static properties as a benefit. It is clear some individual notice that a highly polymer vinyl would adhere to glass and highly polished surfaces. The static cling decal and label substrate was introduced to the printing manufacturers’ as a new substrate, without adhesive.

This was a product with a viable future, because there are many situations that a static cling decal or label would be necessary. The one industry that easily accepted this new product was sunglass and reading glasses manufacturers.

Before the invention of static cling substrates, this industry used adhesive labels to identify the different types of lens offered. If you remember purchasing sunglasses in the 1960’s- the early 1970’s you will recall trying to remove the label affixed to the lens of the eyewear. You will also recall trying to remove the adhesive once the label was removed, and if done incorrectly scratching the lens in the process. This was very frustrating to you as the consumer and was equally frustrating to the sunglass manufacturer.  

The use of promotional decals by companies now had an additional alternative to offer their customers who affixed promotional decals on their vehicles. Many consumers liked the idea of promoting their product purchases, but did not want to affix an adhesive decal to their vehicle.

Static materials now used on retail storefront advertising product specials and in many different venues used for temporary messages. There are two types of static cling material white and clear. The clear material is used for inside the window mounting of the decal and the white material is used to mounted the decal on the outside of the window or on the outside of a product like sunglasses.

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

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

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