Thanks for the feed back guys.
Once art work is produced and sold for cabinets, do they generally stay in production or is it similar to playfield/ back glass production runs which come and go with long periods between re runs if at all?
I had a look on Wayne's site, no BOP currently in stock. Anyone brought cab decals from Bay Area Amusements before?
http://bayareaamusements.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=GS-BOP11-1002-50002NG
I just bought FT from them, can let you know in a few weeks if no-one else have bought from them... At least if hard rubbing shifts the ink which today I witnessed in some of the 'bad' ones, scary brand new and rub with the back of your nail shifts the ink almost immediately (thankfully they were not ones I had bought, yet)..
I also have not got some BSD ones coming from eleswhere as they are unlicensed still, if only there were some licensed ones around I would have got them..
The ink shifts because the print has not been laminated.. it will also decay pretty fast under UV light.
Screen printed is the best you can get.. then comes the " next Gen" which is a digital print.. this type of p[rinter can print white which standard wide format digital print cannot.
There are a few base vinyls that can be printed onto which range in price ( not by much id like to add).. the cheapest ( monomeric) will lift after a certain amount of time and really is for temporary installations.. then you have polymeric which is for more permanant installations and suffers less shrinkage. Finally we have CAST films which are a stabilised liquid.. it will not shrink as its not a squished out lump of plastic but is formed by a liquid base.
You can print onto any of these vinyls but unless it is run through a laminater, the print will wear off. Rolls of laminate are bought and the print is fed through the machine. This is not like the heat laminater you can buy for A4 sheets etc.. it is a roll of thin clear vinyl that comes in gloss, semi gloss or matt... without this protective layer, any print will wear very quickly.
I printed up some STAR TREK decals for a member here a few years back and they had a semi gloss laminate applied... it makes for easier application and i bet my arse that the decals look as good as the day i supplied them.
