Vehicle Wrapping

Car advertising or a vehicle wrap is known as the marketing practice of completely or partially covering (wrapping a vehicle in an advertisement or livery). The result of this process is essentially a mobile billboard. Car advertising can be achieved by painting a vehicle’s outer surface, but an increasingly ubiquitous practice in the 21st century involves the use of large vinyl sheets as “decals”. The vinyl sheets can later be removed with relative ease, drastically reducing the costs associated with changing advertisements.

Advancements in plastics have led to new types of vinyl designed specifically for car advertising, including vinyl sheets that feature bubble-preventing air channels. Microscopic glass beads are used to prevent an adhesive from functioning until the user is ready (the beads allow the material to be repeatedly lifted and reapplied during the wrapping process, without compromising the longevity of the wrap). The vinyl is heated with a heat gun or torch for the purpose of moulding the material around objects.

Decals can be made to cover side and rear windows on a vehicle, but for safety reasons, the front windows used by the driver are not covered. The decals on side windows are typically perforated, so that it is still possible for passengers to look outside. This See-through graphic technology originated in the 1980s, with the first dominant patent registered by a British company called Contra Vision.

Calendared vinyl film or Calendared vinyl sheeting, is manufactured by mixing powdered PVC, liquid softener and colouring agent into a molten dough-like mixture. The mixture is then extruded through a die, and pressed into an increasingly thin sheet using a series of hard pressure rollers, called calendaring rolls. When the material reaches the calendaring rolls, it passes through a series of decreasing gaps, which, in turn, increases the temperature and uniformity of the mixture. After each pass, the film becomes thinner and wider until the material is formed into a thin sheet of vinyl. The vinyl is then cooled, wound, and later coated with adhesive.

While vinyl wrapping can temporarily protect a car’s paint job from superficial damages, like sun fading and scratching, it does not provide any additional protection against physical impacts (dings or dents) that can cause the paint to chip. Damages can occur to the underlying paint, particularly if it is not properly cured before adhesives and or vinyl wrap is applied. If a vehicle is repainted prior to installing a vinyl wrap, the paint must cure to manufactures specifications before a vinyl wrap can be applied safely. Failure to wait for the paint manufacturer’s cure time may result in paint or clear coat damage when the vinyl wrap is removed from the vehicle’s surface