On day one, most vehicle graphics will look good. A low-cost material will produce a finish that looks pretty impressive, even to the trained eye. Over time, using the wrong materials for your vehicle, or fleet, will bite you in the bumper! If you go cheap, you’re going to have to go again … much more quickly.

Without getting too technical, here’s a little lowdown on some of the materials that are commonly used in vehicle wrapping and why we use the materials we do.

Three kinds of sticky stuff

We’ll avoid the detail of plasticisers, short chain chemical bonds and molecule sizes, and stick to simple facts! Sticky stuff can be broken down into 3 areas:

• Monomeric – doesn’t stretch, not very stable, shrinks over time.
• Polymeric – will stretch a little but keeps its memory and shrinks back again, relatively stable, may shrink a little over time.
• Cast – stretchable and can lose its memory with heat, very stable and if it’s good quality it won’t shrink over time.

Can you guess which material we’re using for our vehicle graphics?!

We only use cast materials from 3M

We would never use monomeric film on a vehicle wrap because it wouldn’t stretch into the recesses of the vehicle. The expansion and contraction of a vehicle in heat and cold also rules out polymeric film, because the subtle movement of the vehicle exterior, takes the material with it. This means over time, you get a dirt line around the graphics where the materials have shrunk.

We only use cast materials from 3M on vehicles, we hate those dirt lines! 3M are the industry leader in adhesives and films. We can trust the materials, knowing that they’ve been thoroughly tested in appropriate environments. We can also access their technical people to discuss solutions to more complicated jobs.

Regular customers trust our choice of materials

Understanding the right materials to ensure durability and performance over time, is what we’re good at. Our customers come back. Not to replace tired old graphics after a short time, but to ask us to wrap new vehicles with new graphics. We also regularly secure new business when existing customers refer their contacts to us. Read more about this in our vehicle graphics case study with a commercial vehicle accident repair and painting centre.

If you want to understand more about how to select the right materials for your vehicle wrap, then talk to our knowledgable team, we promise not to go on about plasticisers or chemical bonds!