Digital wide-format printers have the versatility and capability to print directly to non-traditional materials. Melony Rocque-Hewitt looks at how this is creating new niche areas for PSPs.
A sheet of glass worth £90 is not very exciting. However, take the aforementioned sheet, print an image to its underside direct using a digital flatbed printer, and the same sheet of glass not only looks a whole lot more attractive but it’s probably worth somewhere in the region of £300.
This is killing several birds with one stone. You’ve gone and added a new niche application to your arsenal of services, ensured differentiation from the competition, generated healthy margins and have the equipment that can cope with more or less anything, so customers won’t need to go anywhere else. Welcome to the world of specialty, direct-to-substrate printing, which relies on you being proactive, creative and opportunistic.
One company that is optimising market opportunity is the Northampton-based Boyall Graphics and Print. It installed a Spuhl Virtu RS35 nearly three years ago, allowing it to offer new niche products as well as pushing the company to evolve as a business. Direct digital printing to glass is a prime example of a new niche area for the company, servicing the architectural, construction, commercial and domestic markets. A partnership with a stone worktop company means that Boyall’s also offers a professional template and fitting service.
One of the latest jobs the company carried out was for start up company Swan CIC. The latter wanted to set up a kitchen and diner operation as an educational facility that would look professional, hygienic and more up market than the average café. Due to the location the café would be used both as an educational centre for farmers and teachers to conduct presentations relating to food production and preparation.
Swan CIC wanted branding to appear clean, colourful and healthy in its approach, whilst at the same time having an educational theme. To provide a high quality finish for its splash backs would require something more appropriate than the usual stainless steel. Keeping costs low was important and this posed a problem. After talking with technical sales specialist Brandon Boyall, it was agreed that digitally printed, specially treated glass splash backs and other areas throughout the restaurant would fit the bill.
Photographic quality ‘Azul Aran’ blue/silver marble effect artwork was created in-house and then digitally printed onto the heat- resistant glass splash backs. Creating the artwork for the marble in house meant that Boyall could include educational messages within the theme of the marble effect. Similar messaging was employed in other areas of the business such as glass table mats. Complementary canvas and acrylic wall prints, Dibond wall lettering and matching bespoke wall clocks were also produced.
Brandon Boyall believes that central to the success and growth of its digital glass printing is the company’s Virtu machine. “The way it is engineered and built, its operation, it provides superior adhesion even with standard UV inks, it handles a wide substrate range. It delivers exactly what was promised,” he says. In addition to the printer, the company has invested in a glass cleaning and priming machine – vital to the glass printing process.
While digitally printing onto materials such as wood and particularly glass is still a small part of its business, it is a growing one and an emerging trend is photographic natural finishes such as stone being applied to glass.
Boyall’s has also been printing directly to wooden doors and tables. In comparison to glass, says Brandon Boyall, wood printing is more straightforward, but the true consideration is in the professional finishing.
This potential to print onto a whole host of products is evolving the company’s business model, and as well as enabling the company deeper penetration into existing customer relationships.
“Printers in our industry need to wake up to the potential of personalisation and what is possible. While moving into these new areas can be daunting as it involves the establishment and investment in new skills and infrastructure, or creating new partnerships to help you do so, not doing it will prove to be a crunch point,” believes Brandon.
The ongoing search for new opportunities was the raison d’etre behind the installation of the EFI Vutek QS3 220 printer at Bristol-based Artworks Solutions. The purchasing decision, says managing director John Sulzmann, was about looking at the bigger picture.
“The biggest message of flatbed printing is that it creates as many opportunities as you want it to,” says Sulzmann. For a medium sized, boutique printer offering high-end solutions for the workplace, the company is firmly committed to providing new innovations for its traditional customer base rather than going further afield.
Since installing its machine, the company has offered its customers a range of solutions that would have been difficult to produce before. Sulzmann says that not only is Artwork Solutions creating demand for new products but is also creating stronger and deeper relationships with its existing client base.
For Tim Hill, managing director of Maidstone-based Speedscreen, installing a Durst Rho 800 18 months ago has been something of a delightful revelation. Digital growth has gone from 17% to 40%, and the company is set to install a second Durst machine - a Rho 320 - anytime now. “What it’s done is open up a much wider gamut of opportunity for us,” he says.
Established in 1986, Speedscreen (which now handles digital and screenprint) works with both glass and wood. One client for example, has always used screenprinting techniques to print on mirrors, however the benefits of direct-to-substrate digital printing (i.e the cost-savings, short-runs and speed) has excited the client hugely, and currently Speedscreen is waiting for feedback on future production.
Printing directly to MDF for window displays for large retail clients is becoming more popular too and something the company would never have done before. “MDF is a cheap substrate,” says Hill. “It’s plain, boring and brown. We lay down white, and four-colour print over it, and use our in-house Esko routing table to cut out the final shape. It’s a very successful solution,” he says.
Other ‘wood-like’ applications have come in the guise of budget B&Q, four panel, doors that have been put through the Rho for superb edge-to edge printing. These doors - particularly because they contain recesses - have the ‘Wow’ factor and have been extremely effective selling aids.
Hill believes that the Rho has provided the company with a hugely reliable machine with capabilities that are limited by one’s imagination. However, it’s all a question of commercial focus. Says Hill: “There is a great deal of potential in the digital personalisation market. I see great innovations around me all the time, and there’s no doubt a good living to be made from companies that tap into this vast market across the Internet.
“We might be missing a trick but we just don’t have the time or resource to devote to that. There are margins to be made, and for printers like us who have the kit and the experience, perhaps the way forward for those in the wide-format digital print industry is to create strategic partnerships with designers, architects and agencies, those who do all that front-end stuff, and we just do what we are good at – the actual printing.”
Potty about ceramics?
Large-format flatbed manufacturers often cite ceramic as a material that can be directly printed onto using UV print technology. While printing onto ceramic tiles can look absolutely stunning for temporary promotional purposes, (think temporary trade exhibitions particularly for catering and retail clients), due to the fact that the ink is surface-applied, there are issues around adhesion. Indeed if ceramic tiles are required then PSPs such as the Watford-based Stylographics use dye-sublimation as the preferred method of production.
Those in the business of designing tiles and other ceramic wear will often output a digital image through a laser printer or dye-based digital printer, the decals or transfers are then transferred to the white wear which in turn is fired in a kiln at high temperatures. The image becomes part of the actual glaze and is permanent.
It’s a skin thing
It’s not just rigid materials that are gaining attention, there are some high margins to be made in the world of skin. Long standing Mimaki reseller and print company, RA Smart, has an impressive heritage in high-end textile printing, and for partner Magnus Mighall, the challenge of producing high quality prints on leather became something of a pet project. With other print companies digitally printing leather using the dye sublimation or solvent route with some degree of success, he felt sure there was a better way to marry up the advantages of a digital print with the potential for a premium end product manufactured from leather.
Having trialed existing digital techniques, he very much stumbled upon a process using original Mimaki acid inks (an aqueous formulation) printing direct to either vegetable, or the more supple, chromium tanned leather. One of Mighall’s first attempts was to try screen printing the leather with acid inks – more typically used for achieving high end results onto silk, nylon and wool - but the various other elements of the ink chemistry were “getting in the way” of the dye’s ability to key to the hide.
The beauty of digitally jetting acid (and other textile) inks is that the binder and other aspects of the chemistry are present in the pre-coating of the fabric, so what is actually jetted is almost pure dye. Finding spectacular success using this route was something of a Eureka moment for the company, with not only deep, rich and vibrant colours achievable but also excellent rub fastness and print consistency.
Whilst RA Smart has had great success using a combination of the Mimaki TX2 and Mimaki’s acid inkset, Mighall is quick to stress the importance of testing everything beforehand. “You’re dealing with a very variable substrate,” he says, “and whilst that’s the beauty of the leather itself, the end application needs to be considered in the testing to ensure that rub fastness and colour consistency is as expected.”
The company is able to produce high-end gifts, belts, wallets, folios and phone covers, and it’s this sort of application that Mighall feels is best suited to the process. “Small accessories are the perfect product to create digitally,” he notes. “A premium product can be created but it’s quite a labour intensive process, so the payback needs to represent this.”
RA Smart has hides cut square and, with the likes of Masonic lambs leather, dyed white to deliver the best colour yield. The hide is then affixed to a board to ensure consistent carriage through the printer - Mighall’s preferred machine being a 1.6m wide Mimaki TX2.
“The adjustable head height on the TX2 allows us to run the combination of board and 3mm thick leather through the machine, and the flexibility of the printer is a bonus too.
“In addition to leather printing, it’s possible to use the acid inks for their more typical application of silk printing. Of course the TX2 can have two different ink types installed as well, so if users want the ultimate flexibility, there’s nothing to stop them running a dye sub inkset in one bank of heads and opening up all the opportunities of printing to polyester or transfer paper as well.”
This kind of intensive R&D is nothing new to the company. As one of the first digital textile printing companies in the UK, it often finds itself breaking new ground and pursuing interesting (and hopefully profitable) new revenue streams. “The benefits of trying new projects are in finding success such as with the leather application. It brings new companies to the printing arena, gives us another string to our bow and delivers yet another series of products that can be produced with the digital model,” concludes Mighall.