Vinyl recomendations

[world]

also , what is calendared.?

[bigwater]

Punched means that it has sprocket holes in the edges to use with a sprocket fed plotter. Unpunched has no holes and can only be used on a friction/grit wheel feed system. You can use punched on a grit wheel system, but you can't use unpunched on a sprocket system.

Calendered and cast are the two types of vinyl. Calendered starts out basically as a tub of semi-molten goo that is mashed through increasingly thinner and thinner dies until the proper thickness is achieved. Due to the properties of the vinyl, it has a memory that makes it want to try to draw back up into it's initial goo shape where it was before it got stretched out, so calendared vinyl will shrink and crack on you over time as it fights the adhesive to try to get back to it's former self.

Cast starts out in a pure molten state and is laid down into it's final shape while still in the molten stage. It has no memory of a previous shape, and therefore won't shrink on you. The production process is much more expensive for cast than it is for calendered, which is why the vinyl costs so much more. Cast is also generally much thinner than calendered, and more flexible, so it is a lot easier to work with on compound curves.

You can tell when somebody cheaped out and used calendered vinyl very quickly. Within six months of installation on a vehicle, there will be a thin 1/16th-1/8th" "dirt" outline around the decal where the calendered vinyl has shrunk leaving the adhesive exposed where the vinyl used to be. The adhesive of course then attracts dirt.

For paint mask, it's not really important what you use because you aren't leaving it on more than a few days at most anyway. Just use whatever is on sale and has the lowest tack. Color doesn't matter, brand doesn't matter. Anything that doesn't break the bank and will come up without ripping off your previous layers of paint will work. There are specific low tack products marketed as paint mask or sand blast stencil materials... I already mentioned a couple of brands. These can be valuable if you've got detailed work that you're worried about being pulled off by aggressive adhesive... but generally won't be necessary.