It is true that odd sizes can result in materials waste, because there are only 2 real sizes of Duratrans film in the world: 50” wide and 72” wide (not including a technically non-Duratrans LED-exposed backlit color media that is less than 50”).

Some Duratrans fabricators may use the term “bleed” when they mean “waste”. Technically, in the printing industry, “bleed” only means artwork that touches the edge of the final printed sheet, AFTER it’s been cut to final size for delivery. It shouldn’t have anything to do with actual waste of materials.
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This question came up recently, from a customer who wanted us to build an ultra-large lightbox for Duratrans backlit film graphics, with a totally seamless appearance. Here’s how I responded:Dear [Customer]: After talking to our Engineering Dept., we can’t build a seamless lightbox (for duratrans film) where both dimensions are larger than 100”. This is because the max. roll width of our 3/16” thick polycarbonate lens material (both the white diffuser lens and the front clear lens) is 100” wide. So if your design for the larger (24 ft. wide) lightbox could be adjusted so that the shorter of the 2 dimensions is reduced to 100” (plus frame thickness) then we can go seamless on the lightbox design.

(For the smaller lightbox, I’m assuming that the requested 102” height can be spec’d as the outside dimensions — not the graphic size — so then our 100” lens material will work fine here.)

So here are our options:

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Customers often ask, what are the pros and cons of having my backlit graphics laminated, or not? The best answer usually depends on one or more of several environmental factors, as follows:

Which type of backlit graphic do you have?
Most backlit graphics are made from Duratrans, or color positive photo film. Duratrans is fairly durable as backlit graphics go, although the emulsion side is susceptible to excessive moisture and scuffing. The emulsion side of Duratrans is the front (right-reading) side, and this is the side that typically gets laminated. For backlit graphics that are imaged using the aqueous inkjet process, lamination is almost always recommended, because the inkjet-receptive coating (either right or wrong reading) is very sensitive to moisture and scuffing. There is one other type of inkjet backlit graphics, solvent-based, in which case there is no coating and therefore less sensitivity.
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