Decals for floor

[shocksystems]

In previous posts I have seen people who have placed decals under their clear coats of epoxy. It looks great.

My question is, where should I look for these (for sale)? Anyone have any pointers on-line?

Cheers!

Jim

 

[Fast Cop]

I have found all my decals on e-bay.

 

[SteveL]

You can have any local sign shop make them for you to what ever size you want. All you need is an art file that they can scale to the size you need. They should be able to work from a .jpg or .tiff or .eps file. Cost will vary so you may want to get a couple of prices first.

 

[enginerd]

Just be careful with blowing up JPG's, they will pixelate.

EPS will would be best, keep the resolution as high as possible, your local vinyl shop can help you I am sure.

We're thinking about that as well, although you are stuck with it...so we're thinking to keep the signage on the walls and hanging from the high ceiling.

 

[boiler7904]

Cal Car Cover has a few floor graphics in their catalog.

 

[shocksystems]

Cal Car Cover has a few floor graphics in their catalog.

Thanks. Can't help but notice they seem to be GM biased

I did find some potential ones here as well

http://www.onlinecardecals.com/auto.htm

There were a ton on Ebay but the vast majority were small (intended for car windows) and it is painful to sort through them and try and find the larger ones.

Cheers!

Jim M

 

[Oldbroncogarage]

How well do they last encapsulated in the clearcoat? I'm worried that with anything else they'll wear if in heavy use areas of the floor.....

 

[shocksystems]

How well do they last encapsulated in the clearcoat? I'm worried that with anything else they'll wear if in heavy use areas of the floor.....

Good question. I would be interested to hear from others with experience. Someone noted (I think) that the decals are similar in form to the paint chips. So I am hoping they will fare as well as paint chips.

Cheers!

Jim

 

[boiler7904]

I've never personally seen one installed so I don't know. My thought would be to apply multiple coats of clear if thats the concern.

 

[DynoDave]

Well, I would think you would want to leave them on the surface. I can't imagine a vinyl decal that is going to expand and contract at the same rate as an epoxy floor coating. This would ultimately have to lead to some sort of failure, or delamination, wouldn't it?

The epoxy is designed to soak into the pores of the concrete to create a bond. This will not be possible on the surface of the decal, and again, I would think the clear would flake off of the decal in time.

If you center the decal, as in vendor pictures above, you won't be driving on it, and at the back of the car/front of the garage, there probably won't be much foot traffic either.

Just a few thoughts....

 

[Wardrum]

How well do they last encapsulated in the clearcoat? I'm worried that with anything else they'll wear if in heavy use areas of the floor.....

This logo is located directly in front of my workbench with cabinets below so I am constantly walking on it. It is covered by two coats of clear and will have been down 3 years this coming October. No signs of wear yet.



I also have stripes around my four post lift (installed after the pics were taken) that are driven over regularly. They are also covered by two coats of clear with no sign of wear except one area where I dragged a sharp piece of steel over them.



In case you are wondering, the bucket is covering the electric cable coming through the floor for the hoist

 

[shocksystems]

This logo is located directly in front of my workbench with cabinets below so I am constantly walking on it. It is covered by two coats of clear and will have been down 3 years this coming October. No signs of wear yet.



I also have stripes around my four post lift (installed after the pics were taken) that are driven over regularly. They are also covered by two coats of clear with no sign of wear except one area where I dragged a sharp piece of steel over them.



In case you are wondering, the bucket is covering the electric cable coming through the floor for the hoist

Wardrum: Where did you get the stripes from? It looks great BTW.

Cheers!

Jim

 

[DynoDave]

This logo is located directly in front of my workbench with cabinets below so I am constantly walking on it. It is covered by two coats of clear and will have been down 3 years this coming October. No signs of wear yet.



I also have stripes around my four post lift (installed after the pics were taken) that are driven over regularly. They are also covered by two coats of clear with no sign of wear except one area where I dragged a sharp piece of steel over them.



In case you are wondering, the bucket is covering the electric cable coming through the floor for the hoist

Hey, a real world example! Excellent!

Are those decals anything special, or just plain old vinyl decals?

 

[Wardrum]

Hey, a real world example! Excellent!

Are those decals anything special, or just plain old vinyl decals?

First of all, thanks for the comments.

The Chevy logo was made by a local sign shop. They had the logo in their computer and sized it to my requirements. It is just regular vinyl as far as I know. The stripes are vinyl tape supplied by the sign shop. Again, nothing special as far as I know.

I used U-Coat-It on the floor and applied the vinly per their instructions. Seems to be holding up well so far.

 

[brone1]

Do you wait for the epoxy to dry before laying down the decal and coating with a clear top coat??

 

[boiler7904]

Do you wait for the epoxy to dry before laying down the decal and coating with a clear top coat??

Yes. Otherwise, it will take forever for the epoxy under the logo to cure.

 

[brone1]

Boiler7904,

What if you are putting down color chips over the epoxy?? How do you get the chips on when wet, and the decal on when dry, and have the chips run right up against the decal??
Thanks in advance for your reply,
Brian

 

[brone1]

Or do you put the decal right on top of the chips?? I am doing a heavy broadcast to get a granite look??

 

[SteveL]

My understanding is that the graphics are applied over the color chips or over the final clear coat. Only down side is that the texture of the chips will show in the vinyl. I guess if you were really good, you could avoid applying chips to the area that the decal will end up, but I can't imagine that working very well.

 

[Wardrum]

What if you are putting down color chips over the epoxy?? How do you get the chips on when wet, and the decal on when dry, and have the chips run right up against the decal??

There are probably several ways to do it but the sequence I used to put the decals and chips down was as follows:

1. Lay down final color coat without any decals or color chips and let dry.
2. Place self-adhesive decals/stripes on the color coat.
3. Lay down 1 coat of clear over the decals and about 10"-12" around the decals to seal them in and let dry.
4. Cover decals (and any other areas that you don't want color chips on) with thin plastic film available from sign shop.
5. Lay down another coat of clear and broadcast the color chips onto the wet clear coat and let dry. I suggest doing small areas at a time so that you can properly broadcast the chips.
6. Cut along the edges of the decals with an Exacto knife to get a fine line and carefully remove the film. Any color chips that fell onto the film will come off with the film.
7. Lay down a heavy final coat of clear over entire floor to seal in the decals and chips and let dry.

And presto, you're done. Well.....not quite. Pull up a chair, grab a cold one...or two...or three...and admire your work.

 

[brone1]

Tahank you all for your replies. I will post pics when completed and share the steps I took. Looking at doing this in a couple weeks.

 

[brone1]

After reviewing Original Color Chips website, they suggest placing the decal in wet epoxy and then apply your color chips. They make no mention of curing being an issue under the decal. I am going to call them tomorrow to see if this is an issue.

 

[brone1]

I spoke with the Color Chips people and found out it is a typo on their website. You do not lay decal into the wet epoxy... They said, as Wardrum said earlier, to install decal after the epoxy has dried.. Just wanted to clear that up.

 

[phy6]

I am also looking to really dress up one of my bays either with a large logo or some metallic candy flake off eBay, so seeing this thread was great. I've seen some examples where a logo was painstakingly laid out with colored epoxies, but it seems like too much of a pain. The one I saw was a Sunoco Gas logo.

For your scalable brand logos, download the files you want off of this site, and take it to your sign shop.


http://brandsoftheworld.com/

Then they can enlarge the sticker without getting pixelized.

 

[awakeinAZ]

If you're looking for cool gas station scenes that are EXTREMELY large but go on a wall instead......try this!


http://www.garagescenes.com/gas_station_scenes.html

Makes it much easier to remove...LOL.

 

[Cen-Cal Coatings]

Not a garage floor, but a logo none the less. This was done for a local HS atheletic support group. Just acrylic enamel over the red Vortex sprayliner. You could use the same method for any flooring. This was created with a vinyl stencil from a local sign shop.

 

[awakeinAZ]

Good idea!!!!

 

[Piper]

while everyone that has done this has epoxied their floor completely is there any reason why you couldn't do a certain area with the epoxy and leave the rest of the floor un-epoxied?

My floor is really large and I'd like to have 2 or 3 spots where there are floor logos. Granted you'd see the edge where the epoxy stops but is there any reason why I couldn't do only a section?

Piper

 

[hobie1dog]

So you put a Ford emblem , then something changes and you end up putting up the house for sale......The most interested buyer walks out into the garage and is a former Chevy parts man that has a 69 COPO 427 Camaro that he wants to put in the garage, don't you think that is going to be a big deal for him knowing that it is under epoxy?

 

[wildcat12]

I always work with a local sign company and have them come to the job and apply the decal..... after all thats their job. Most are more than happy to do it and for a decent fee. I think this one cost me $200.00 for the decal and installation. Actually, this is a (stencil) , they put it down and you paint in the field then pull it up after your coating dries, leaving the image behind on your floor.

The only decal that should be clear coated with the high build, clear, high performance coatings that we use as final coats on floors are the ones with the tiny holes in them. These are the same ones you see in the back windows of pick up trucks where you can see out of the window, but when you look in, you see the image. Clear coating a solid vinyl decal with high performance coatings runs the risk of unbonding because you can't get penatration like you do with pourus concrete and if something is dropped on it it could pop loose from the decal

 

[Robert J Hall]

I have done full broadcast of flakes and top coated with Polyaspartic. How do I apply the vinyl decal over the top of Polyaspartic. I have several customers asking me about it. I see photos of them but no info on how to do it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Armorpoxy]

A note of caution on larger decals..the coatings don't like to stick to the decals as they are smooth and have no texture so clear coats over them can delaminate, we have seen this often when customers call and is not a problem with the coating, but with adhering to this type of surface. For this reason make sure to NOT put the decal in an area with tire traffic.

The post from 6/17/19 is correct, those are the best products to use as they get 'embedded' into the clear coat. We sell these special order occasionally, but they work great and we use them in firehouses actually with epoxy systems.

Our recommendation is to have a local sign shop make you your decal, and then if it gets crappy or fails in the years ahead it's easy to remove and replace. A delaminating floor is not as easy to fix well.

 

[RaceDeck1]

just be sure to go with a good quality commercial decal ( like 3M ).. others can react to epoxy and solvents