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This new high intensity reflective stuff is 17 mil thick! Has anyone out there had any success cutting it without tearing up their plotter? The tech at 3M says there are a few machines out there with enough downforce to handle it but I have to wonder. Why do they come up with this stuff that's not user friendly anyway?
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The high intensity was designed to cover the whole background of the sign and not really to be cut on a vinyl cutter. 3M has a colored translucent that is then cut on the machine and applied over the backer, it is made for this purpose. This material was designed for the Highway safety sign industry, 3M lobbied the State and got a bill passed to replace all street signs with high intensity in the next couple of years, our small town has over 500 stop signs. When cutting high intensity you can duplicate your design on top of itself and cut both at once, this sometimes works, Its hell on blades as there is crushed reflective material and glass in the vinyl.
-------------------- Silver Creek Signworks Dick Bohrer Two Harbors, MN Posts: 236 | From: Two Harbors, MN USA | Registered: Jun 1999
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We've used it to cover sign blanks for offramp signs, but have never attempted to cut it with the plotter. It's pretty thick stuff, and not easy to put down (watch for squeegee scratches). If you can get away with not using high intensity I would suggest oracal oralite 5600. It's really nice stuff and alot easier to get on and off than all of the other reflectives I have used. Really the only reason you would need high intensity is if the signs were off the highway. And in that case you can either cover the whole blank or get the blank already covered. Then you can add graphics to the blank with transparent vinyls so the reflective shows through.
Talk to the folks at Reflexite. They have a high-intensity series comparable to 3M's but its thinner and can be cut with a standard plotter. The catch is that you have to purchase an entire log. The good news is that they'll cut it down to whatever widths you need.
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Hmmm.. I did have a couple of people tell me that they laminated the substrate with the HI first and then cut the letters out of the translucent and overlaid it, however my background is aluminum with an enamel finish and I'm not required to use a reflective background. Just a customer that is set on HI material because of it's visibility. I also was told that you could cut it with a laser or a die cutter but neither are something I have available to me. May just have to stick with the engineer grade reflective.
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