So you’ve got your brand new vinyl cutter all hooked up and you’re ready to start making signs and vinyl decals. Congratulations! Now what? If you need a basic primer on what you need to start covering your world in sings, nifty stickers and wall words, this blog post is for you.
Why do we need a special guide for wall graphics?
Experienced sign and graphics folks need to understand that interior wall graphics pose unique challenges. If you start with the idea that you can use the same materials and techniques that work for auto glass and aluminum sign blanks, you’re in for problems.
For hobby users, all of this is new and if you look for basic guides on using self adhesive vinyl, they may not deal specifically with wall words. This will cover the basics of what to use and how to apply it and point you toward more online resources for further study. Let’s look at the unique materials, surface challenges, and application tips that will make your wall graphics applications successful.
Nothing is more disappointing than applying a perfect graphic to a clean substrate with top of the line tools only to wind up with bubbles and wrinkles in the vinyl, detracting from the finished product. Here are some tips to prevent that from happening.
We’ve touched on this in a previous blog post, but since we’re talking about adhesives, we should mention that some surfaces are not compatible with anything we’ve covered so far. Porous surfaces and certain plastics are very difficult, even for high quality solvent adhesives. There is a long technical explanation for this, but the basic reason is that the adhesive is unable to ‘wet out” or cure completely.