Understanding what vinyl is and its qualities will help you to understand it’s prevalence in the sign business and some of the factors affecting its removal. Vinyl or “Polyvinyl Chloride” is a chemical that produces a flexible vinyl film used to produce a large variety of decorative as well as protective film products. One class of product “graphic film” possesses a unique feature set that makes it very well suited to decorating stationary surfaces (or substrates), as well as mobile ones.At SignWorks this opaque vinyl film, which is usually four thousandth of an inch in thickness, is fed into our Eco-Solvent Printer and printed images and lettering are applied to the surface. Once the non-permanent pressure sensitive release liner (or underside of the film) is removed, the resulting graphic can be transferred to a variety of surfaces using transfer tape. Often, the resulting graphic, whether it’s text, a logo or a photo-realistic image, is over laminated to protect the image against damage.
The ease of removal of vinyl from a substrate will be determined by a variety of factors, including how clean, smooth, warm or cold the vinyl was when it was applied. Other factors like whether the installation surface was properly prepared and the type of installation (wet or dry) that was done will have an impact. Environmental considerations like aging and the amount of indoor/outdoor exposure will likewise have an effect. The effects of pollution, pollen, airborne particulate, rain, cold, snow, ice, chemical cleaning agents used, etc., will all have an effect.
