Anyone with experience with license plates?

[Peter Spier]

I have some photos I'm considering using for license plates. Anyone have any experience doing this? Recommended Printer?

[Randy Hagan]

Depends on a number of factors — estimated service life, surface to which it will be applied, etc.

But for the job I did a while ago for a run of ~100 plates, I had them CMYK printed on a wet sticky-back vinyl with a wide-format printer, like you'd use for vinyl signage. Then cut and applied with soapy water and squeegeed to white-coated plate-sized stampings. Essentially applying them like you would with a trim decal or vehicle wrap. Then sprayed them with a clearcoat finish to protect them. They lasted for a couple of buyers for a good 5-6 years on the front of their cars — maybe longer.

I can't really recommend a specific wide-format printer to buy, because I don't do a lot of that kind of work and I used a vendor to print the vinyl and cut it up into license plate-sized units. The finish work I did myself with a homemade wooden jig to position the vinyl on the plates and a bunch of elbow grease. Most any small sign shop could support short-run needs with this workflow.

Hope this helps you,

Randy

[Peter Spier]

Thanks, Randy.

Hadn't actually planned on printing them myself. I've found a number of vendors online who will do them on aluminum for around $10 or so, depending on quantity, and wondered if anyone had done that, and how satisfied they were with the results.

My wife had plates made more than 40 years ago, before we were married, and I think they were screen-printed, but they were simple B&W graphics. Lasted more than a decade, perhaps two, but I doubt she remembers who the vendor was. Interesting about the vinyl, though. I used to work for an output service where we did wide format signage on that kind of material.