Put Some Vinyl on It!

Portlandia memes aside, the new rAMP is now housing vinyl printing and cutting so that Arcimotos can be all dolled up. I'm ashamed to admit I didn't get a single picture of the machines or rolls of vinyl 😞 But I can explain the process a bit, I think.

Arcimoto uses 3M Wrap Film (1080 series). This vinyl comes in various colors on 5 foot rolls. They have a couple big roll racks to hold the various colors.

Facility Armor Vinyl Storage Racks

A plotter (or printer) takes printable vinyl and uses inkjet to print images onto the surface. Something like this $10,000 Epson SureColor S40600 is what Arcimoto uses to print designs and images onto 3M printable vinyl.

SureColor S40600 Print Cut Edition

This video shows a print to finished wrap Smart Car.

Much of the printable vinyl is then laminated in order to give extra sun and rain protection. A large laminator can cost $6000. The process is semi automated and can be seen in this YouTube video.

Finally, a vinyl cutter cuts the vinyl to specific patterns that decorate flatter portions of the Arcimoto ABS plastic panels. Because ABS can melt when trying to apply vinyl with a blowtorch, you can't do full wraps on full panels.

As you can see, printing and cutting custom vinyl requires far more steps and involves greater cost than simple single color vinyl.

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