If you read the marketing literature for printers from sign suppliers, they may led you to believe that their printer is all you need to adequately create vehicle wraps that stand up to your competitors. There’s numerous factors involved when deciding to expand or launch your business and in this article we’ll cover some of the options available to you. One of the first things to consider is what types of vehicles you intend on wrapping? - this will give you an idea on sign media handling. A small operation who plans to strictly wrap cars and trucks may be able to use 30″ - 36″ printer such as a Mimaki JV3-75 (www.mimaki.co.jp/english/), while another might prefer to wrap cubevans and larger vehicles may opt for something at 54″ or more.

After deciding on a printer, you’ll need a method to laminate your prints to protect them from chemicals and outdoor exposure. Despite ink guarantees from your vendor, unlaminated graphics are still extremely fragile to such things as UV exposure and scratching. Your choices should match the media size of your printer and either cold film and liquid laminate are standard. Liquid laminate has quite toxic fumes but is very inexpensive, while film laminate is clean and quick to mount. Cold laminators can also be used for mount vinyl to substrates as well as premask graphics which may be huge advantage over a liquid laminator.

If space allows and your printer can have an exclusive space away from employees, you may not need an air scrubber. Solvent fumes can cause havoc on your staff’s body - causing skin irritation and fatigue. If your budget allows it’s a good idea to properly vent and clean the air with a product such as a PAT Captivair (www.pattechnology.com).

Some solvent printers have contour cutting capabilities onboard, while most will print register marks to mainstream cutters with optical eyes. If you’re interested in selling decals, this is definitely something to look into. It’s not necessary to buy matching printers and cutters to achieve this effect as your RIP software will ultimately print marks to match your cutter. Unlike conventional vinyl cutting, printing and contour cutting scenarios are limited to the machines being tightly registered and typically remain accurate to about 10-12 linear feet.

The last thing we’ll need to create our vehicle wraps is RIP software. “RIP” stands for Raster Image Processor and is the heart of your preflight work. Inbetween your design software and solvent printer, your RIP software acts as a intermediate stage to process images. This where you can tile, scale, adjust colors, nest images, etc. While some printer manufacturers bundle their proprietary software with their printers, it is a good to idea to purchase a program for the increased file handling and functionality. Popular RIP programs are Wasatch SoftRIP (www.wasatch.com) and Onyx ProductionHouse (www.onyxgfx.com).