# Removing Vinyl?



## rusty

This is kind of an unusual request, but I just had a customer ask me if there is any way to remove vinyl from their shirts. They are a baseball team and had their sponsor put on the back of their uniforms. Evidently the deal went bad with the sponsor and they do not want it on their jerseys any more. He told me somebody told him that some kind of chemical exists that will remove the vinyl, but I've never heard of anything. Do any of you know of anything.


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## JoshEllsworth

rusty said:


> This is kind of an unusual request, but I just had a customer ask me if there is any way to remove vinyl from their shirts. They are a baseball team and had their sponsor put on the back of their uniforms. Evidently the deal went bad with the sponsor and they do not want it on their jerseys any more. He told me somebody told him that some kind of chemical exists that will remove the vinyl, but I've never heard of anything. Do any of you know of anything.


Stahls carries a chemical to do this or you can stop by your local hardware store and ask for an acetone based solvent. Apply lightly to the inside of the shirt where the letters are...Use a spray bottle or a cotton swab. Let sit for a few minutes and then the letters should peel off. It will leave a adhesive residue and a smell (so use in a well ventilated area). The residue should come out in the first wash.


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## COEDS

What about the smell will it stay after washing? Thanks ...JB


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## JoshEllsworth

COEDS said:


> What about the smell will it stay after washing? Thanks ...JB


No...it washes out. Its just the actual chemical that smells, won't stain either.


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## COEDS

I swear this is my last question, would finger nail polish remover work. Thanks ... JB


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## rusty

Thanks a lot Josh! That's good to know.


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## rusty

I had never thought about this before, but this really is good to know, assuming the vinyl can be taken off successfully without leaving any trace. For example, just yesterday I had a girl tell me she was mad because she went to another shirt shop and had them put her name on the back of her hoodie, and they put it right under the hood where nobody can see it. So I could tell her that we can take that off and put it in a better spot.
Or also if we have any vinyl that is coming off of a shirt, we could take it all off with the acetone and redo the vinyl without replacing the shirt. That could be very helpful. Thanks!


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## sandrwv

Rusty, have you try this to remove vinyl
Sandra


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## rusty

sandrwv said:


> Rusty, have you try this to remove vinyl
> Sandra


Actually, yes, I did just recently try to remove some vinyl. I bought a can of Acetone from Home Depot. I started out dabbing it on the back, and then put quite a bit on it. I was able to peel the vinyl off, but it was not very easy at all, and if I had done it all, it would have taken a LONG time. And it left a cloudy residue on the shirt. I was hoping it would come out in the wash like Josh suggested, but it didn't. So the answer is No, I was not able to remove vinyl successfully. I tried it on 2 different shirts, one with SpectraCut II and one with SportFilm, and neither came off cleanly.

If anybody else has had any luck, please let us know.

Rusty


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## Titere

I tried with a heat gun a frw hours ago and it works,,,but be careful, I burnt the shirt, so the remedy was worst than the problem.


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## jimc

This is an aerosol spray for removing transfers.

J & A International Ltd - Superspray

Jim


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## rusty

jimc said:


> This is an aerosol spray for removing transfers.
> 
> J & A International Ltd - Superspray
> 
> Jim


have you used it successfully? And on what type of transer?


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## DMS

acetone is a comon finger nail polish remover... 
I don't have experience on this (nail polish and removing transfers ;-)) but I would like to remember that dealing with solvents can damage the cloth if it has some kind of syntetic component (even small percentages), same caution applies to long exposure to "high" temperatures, you have to do some trials (and errors) to find out if this task is feasable, or worthwhile.


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## badalou

One thing to do if you just made a press and found out you had it in the wrong place or a little peice did not get weeded out (yeah like have done that a hundred times) a heat gun can heat it up and you can remove while it is hot. Go slowly though.


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## jimc

Rusty, I've not used the spray as I don't have the plotter/cutter yet but according to the supplier's information you spray the back of the garment, this loosens the adhesive allowing the garment vinyl to be peeled off.

Jim


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## rusty

jimc said:


> Rusty, I've not used the spray as I don't have the plotter/cutter yet but according to the supplier's information you spray the back of the garment, this loosens the adhesive allowing the garment vinyl to be peeled off.
> 
> Jim


If you ever get a chance to try it out, and it works, please let us know.

Thanks,
Rusty


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## GreenRiver

I just used Lou's heat gun suggestion on EcoFilm, and it worked great. He's right, though. You must work slowly.


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## INKFREAK

I hate to suggest this as it is a NASTY chemical but its methaline chloride.Stahls sells it and you must read the MSDS sheet that comes with it.You dab it on and within a minute the vinyl bubbles and pulls off.It will leave a adhesive residue but you can blast it out with a spray-out solvent like albatross SPIF.SPIF 2 will not work.The first one has a little methaline chloride in it.


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## PRINTABLES208

I have been told to use METHYLENE CHLORIDE.​


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## PRINTABLES208

That sounds very involved.


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## aaronwolf

*XP2029 TRANSFER REMOVER SPRAY*

CONSUMABLES : ACCESSORIES : TRANSFER REMOVER SPRAY

I use this. It does what it say's on the tin. Its good.

From Xpres.co.uk


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## st258

If the vinyl to be removed is not large, and you have a iron-on vinyl that matches the shirt color, I have simply scissor cut a rectangle piece of iron-on vinyl to cover the offending message, and/or name, and printed a new name/message on the rectangle vinyl. Nobody has ever complained about this "fix" coming off in the wash.
Smith


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## son.of.a.fish

I love you guys!!!!!


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## afgsigns

Hey METHYLENE CHLORIDE Works Great, It smells so use it in a well ventilated area and where gloves but the stuff is amazing, at times you will still see some slight ghosting of the old image but it usually comes out when you heat press the new image on wor when you wash it out, I had a customer send me a layout,that they wanted after all the shirts where done they realized they mispelleda name.. paint in the but but was worth the time to just remove the one name then having to redo all the shirts .


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## jean518

Not all nail polish removers have acetone. Also some nail polish removers acetone based or not have conditioners in them which are oil based. Will leave a stain.


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## rescalona

JoshEllsworth said:


> Stahls carries a chemical to do this or you can stop by your local hardware store and ask for an acetone based solvent. Apply lightly to the inside of the shirt where the letters are...Use a spray bottle or a cotton swab. Let sit for a few minutes and then the letters should peel off. It will leave a adhesive residue and a smell (so use in a well ventilated area). The residue should come out in the first wash.


I was curious about this also. What if its been longer than 48 hours that the vinyl was pressed on the garment? I'm making jerseys and noticed that in a few area there were pieces of vinyl that were overlooked during the weeding process. I tried fingernail polish removal and nothing happened.


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## Blue92

We've used some plastisol remover we picked up to clean up some screen printed items that a previous vendor had screwed up.

Found out the just a small amount applied to the vinyl side (not the adhesive side) would bubble the vinyl and let you remove it very easily. 

We normally washed the garment before re-applying new vinyl. We save a football jersey this way where we were given the wrong name and number for the player.


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## Simonpclifford

Tekmar (the Adhesive and spot cleaning guys)makes a product called TS-VLR for this. They have a video available also-you can check it out at http://tekmarltd.com/products/chemicals/ts-vlr


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## jessica873

I second the heat gun method. Didn't notice I missed a piece of vinyl and when I googled this came up and I used my Lowes gift card to buy one. Can off but you have to go slow and not use the high heat.


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## bigred023

I have reheated garments under the press and quickly weeded small pieces off and it has worked perfectly.


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## mothman78

I removed a vinyl heat press shirt number from my son's football shirt by turning it outside in, placed a clean dry dish towel inside to stop anything soaking though to the other side of the shirt, lay on a flat surface and soaked the area with Acetone (not nail polish remover) pure undiluted Acetone, any hardware store, chemist, supermarket etc sells it, as it is regarded as a general household solvent, and costs about 1 or 2 pounds?, I then pulled the soaked number area stretching back and forwards to loosen vinyl, after about 5 mins the vinyl number peeled off no problem, however I was left with a glue residue in the shape of the number??, well I turned shirt inside out again, placed in a plastic bag and put in the freezer for 24hrs, the cold freezes the glue making it brittle, after 24hrs I took the shirt and lay it on a flat surface and with a blunt butter knife (or something similar) and scrapped off the glue residue while it was still frozen, only took a couple of attempts but worked a treat if your patient and persevere.

Sam


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## Blue92

Goof Off from the backside with a Q-Tip works as well.


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## mharzhel06

In my suggestion, You can just Re-press the image or vinyl that you want to remove... Just don't forget to put a bond paper to the image... 220c for 100sec...


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## hawaiianphatboy

I have used my spot remover gun after heating the vinyl a little. I spray the inside of the shirt with the spot remover and it comes off pretty easily. Good luck.


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## banffunion

You can call up Walter White for some methylene chloride (can get from some chemical company) expect to pay more for shipping then the actual product since it is consider a dangerous chemical good. You can order from stahl' as well http://www.stahls.com/lettering-remover-solvent just put some on a qtip and apply solvent to vinyl and it we shrink up and peel off nicely having tweezers helps too. Sometimes there is a bit of adhesive left from old stuff I just usually reheat press and you can't see it after that. Good luck!


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## mrvixx

Plastisol ink remover also takes vinyl out.


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