Large Format Digital Printing | Where
do you Start? | Substrates
& Solutions | Other Areas | Inkjet
File Setup Guide
Floor graphics
The graphics market is growing fast, retailers from small independents to large multinationals are using graphics to sell their products in an individual store, no longer constrained to large runs of several thousand to make economic sense. As part of this trend in particular, many retailers are using the floor as an integral part of any display. From self-adhesive graphics for permanent or semi-permanent use there are many solutions, we can offer these together with the assurances of antislip finishes and the necessary fire-ratings. No longer do we have to just think of ‘stickers’ when it comes to the floor, we can offer a wide range of carpet graphics, individual tiles or larger areas printed with 4 colour vibrant images straight from disk.
If you have a technical question or need to discuss a particular project please
contact us.
Vehicles livery
Many of the cars and vans we see on the roads today are completely covered in colourful imagery often produced as a ‘one-off’, from simple lines of text and logos to full vehicle wraps, the substrates and technology for making them permanent or removable is there. Other alternatives are magnetic options for occasional use, we have dressed cars for single charity events or whole ‘floats’ for recent Mardi Gras’ parades.
However you look at it, vehicles have a huge potential audience and their advertising worth is only just being exploited to its full.
If you have a technical question or need to discuss a particular project please
contact us.
Dye Sublimation
 A different technology to that described before, here a 4 colour digital image is mirror printed onto a carrier substrate, this substrate is then either laid onto its ‘receiver’ or rolled together on large presses and subjected to high heat and pressure. This causes the inks to turn to gas and in turn pass into the substrate they are being pressured to. For example, many fabrics are prototyped this way, producing short run incredibly complex images onto dress and upholstery fabrics. The same techniques can transfer images onto rigid boards, timber, ceramic tiles, metal work, plastics the range is almost unlimited.
The advantages with this system are that the graphic image becomes an integral part of the end material, physically bonding with the surface molecules to give a permanent image.
The textural qualities of the substrate are kept, like the grain on wood or the brush of fabric or steel, strange juxtaposes of images can be used like carpets with water texture or pebbles, wooden boards with burnt in images and so on.
Many other commercial applications use these processes, like phone backs, surfboards, guitars and much sports utility clothing.
The limitations can come from the size of the heat press although 1m x 2m satisfies most demands and the timescales involved can be a little longer.
If you have a technical question or need to discuss a particular project please
contact us.
Direct to board Printing
Newest to the market and yet potentially the biggest advance in large format for years are the inkjet printers capable of taking any coated or uncoated substrate (usually rigid) and printing directly to the face.
This can be as small as a set of ceramic tiles for the home or a new door. The walls that typically divide office spaces or are used to build many exhibition stands could now be printed top-to-bottom with any type of image, again as a one-off. Moods could be created with subtly changing hues from room to room, or ‘in-your-face’ imagery to really hit home a particular marketing message. Furniture could be printed ‘flat-pack’ and then assembled to give really eye-catching three-dimensional structures. Glass and acrylic can be incorporated; there really are very few limitations. As the technology advances the print quality although very good now will get better and better to start to emulate the sort of results you can expect from your paper stock.
Obviously their real market is that which has been previously dominated by screen-print, with the short, medium or large runs no longer dictating which process you use it really is ‘how many do you want?’
If you have a technical question or need to discuss a particular project please
contact us.
Indoors, Outdoors and Super wide
Many large format printers use dye based water soluble inks as they give a tremendous vibrancy on most paper stocks, their transmission of light allows
colours, especially with the new 6 and 8 colour machines to really shine and for the majority of indoor applications these are still the best option.
The alternatives of solvent or oil based solutions have traditionally given a ‘flatter’ look where colours have been more muted, but again as the technology advances on all fronts, today’s solvent inks give a rich, vibrant range that is certainly on a par with many dye based machines. The oil and solvent inks give the obvious advantage that they are not as affected by UV light and so resist fading to a much higher degree particularly when coupled with a UV inhibiting over-laminate. They are used widely outdoors and some have guarantees of up to 5 years constant exposure to bright sunlight.
Although the printers are often capable of running both dye and solvent inks in one machine, the specialists in each field are often more appropriate for their respective types of work.
It seems to be that much of the outdoor market is growing using the largest possible printers – the ‘super wides’. With digital printers now capable of printing 5m wide in a single piece the exploitation of massive advertising is really taking hold.
In Manchester recently a graphic was produced that was a staggering 32m tall by 100m wide, weighing 1.75
tonnes, making it the largest ever printed in this
country.
Applications from advertising hoardings, banners, scaffolding cladding, full vehicle wraps and event launches can be customised to any degree with truly ‘jaw-dropping’ displays.
Large format digital printing is a bit of a mouthful but what it represents is a solution to many previously uneconomic ideas in how best to create a display that will make people stop and take notice. It can be as small as a door sign or as large as a full building wrap but the basic principles are much the same. The artwork is created in the same way its just the choice of substrates, inks, finishing and printer that determine what the finished result will look like. We believe that collectively as part of the The Design Shop
Group we have the experience, technical know-how and attention to detail to solve any requirement. Much we can handle in-house at our production facilities in
Swindon, some require more specialist companies that we have built up excellent working relationships with over the last
two decades. We welcome any opportunities to discuss ideas further and enjoy the challenge of solving peoples display requirements.
If you have a technical question or need to discuss a particular project please
contact us.
Silk screening
With so much digital printing around there is much debate as to the future of
screenprint, but with its proven groundwork for many years and the huge variety of substrates and specialist machinery devoted to it, it is almost impossible to see it disappearing. Where it is starting to lose ground is in the short to medium run work. You have digitals cost effective at just a one off and screen print best suited to long run work and then a middle ground where the two technologies are slowly converging and getting more competitive.
If you want to work in 4 colour, anything up to 50 off has to be a digital solution, 50-100 is still more likely to be digital, but much more then it starts to turn in favour of the screen print. If you are only dealing with one or two colours however, you could find that screen printing becomes the more viable option much quicker.
To help breakdown the process, digital is discussed at length in other parts of the web site but here is the information about screen print.
With silkscreen process printing you can print onto a great variety of surfaces such as plastics, wood, metal, glass, textiles, paper and board and print a large format size of 60 x 40 inches in one pass, if necessary.
The most common applications for commercial screen printing are posters, stickers, signs, banners, T-shirts, ring binders,
mousemats, promotional items and exhibition displays, to name but a few.
You can print on a wide variety of materials and products that other processes couldn't cope with; amongst these, plastics, glass, metals, wood, textiles and of course paper and board. You can also screen print on 3D objects such as control panels, components and promotional goods.
A Brief History
SILK SCREEN PRINTING has its origins in japanese
stencilling, but the screen printing process that we know today probably stems from the patents taken out by Samuel Simon of Manchester at the turn of the century. He used silk stretched on frames to support hand painted stencils, a process also used by William Morris. In 1914 John Pilsworth of San Francisco also took out a patent for multicolour printing, using the screen process.
During the First World War in America screen printing took off as an industrial printing process; it was mainly used at first for flags and banners but also for 'point of sale' advertising in the chain stores in America, which were appearing around that time.
Around this time the invention of the photographic stencil revolutionised the process; in the following years, obviously improvements were made in the presses, inks and chemicals used, but apart from the introduction of computer technology in the 1980's - in the pre-press side of screenprinting - very little else has changed since.
Walk down any High street and you will see examples of SCREEN PRINTING everywhere: in shops you will see displays and posters advertising their products; you will see buses with ads on their sides; on computers and hi-fi you will notice badges and control panels; all these have been screen printed. In the home you will find that many textiles and items of clothing, sports bags and T shirts have been
screenprinted, as well as the stickers that you have on the rear window of your car.
Artists have also used SILK SCREEN PRINTING, especially since the days of POP ART in the sixties - Andy Warhol
,Rauschenberg and Hamilton are a few notorius examples. These artists opened up a whole new vista in the use of the screen process.
How does screen printing work?
The equivalent of the printing plate for the screen printer is the SCREEN - a wooden or aluminium frame with a fine nylon MESH stretched over it. The MESH is coated with a light sensitive emulsion or film, which - when dry - will block the holes in the mesh. The image that needs to be printed is output to film either by camera or image-setter. This film positive and the mesh on the screen are sandwiched together and exposed to ultra-violet light in a device called a print-down frame. The screen is then washed with a jet of water which washes away all the light sensitive emulsion that has not been hardened by the ultra-violet light. This leaves you with an open stencil which corresponds exactly to the image that was supplied on the film. Now the screen is fitted on the press and is hinged so it can be raised and lowered. The substrate to be printed is placed in position under the screen and ink is placed on the top side of the screen, (the frame acts also as wall to contain the ink ). A rubber blade gripped in a wooden or metal handle called a SQUEEGEE (not unlike a giant wind-screen wiper) is pulled across the top of the screen; it pushes the ink through the mesh onto the surface of the substrate you are printing. To repeat the process the squeegee floods the screen again with a return stroke before printing the next impression.
If you have a technical question or need to discuss a particular project please
contact us.
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