The full-service sign shop prides itself on being able to produce all its clients’ branding needs on-site and on time.
What other types of equipment do you have in your production area?
JP: For this store, we also brought in a 1,625.6-mm (64-in.) Roland DG TrueVIS VG3-640 wide-format printer/cutter. For our eco-solvent machine, we chose a wider ink gamut, including orange ink. I really like the colour spectrum this machine offers, as well as the user interface and the take-up roller changes. We use it to produce a lot of decals, vehicle wraps, and outdoor signage.
We use our UV flatbed printer in combination with a 1,524- x 914.4-mm (60- x 36-in.) laser cutter to manufacture some of our products, which helps keep our costs down. We cut all kinds of shapes and sizes in acrylic, high-impact polystyrene (HIPS), Lamacoid, and wood, and then print on them using our UV flatbed. We’ve printed on acrylic, glass, HIPS plastics, foam board, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), wood, metal, and more.
For UV inks, we’re running a mix I really like, with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK), gloss, white, orange, and red. We find this mix gives us a larger colour spectrum to choose from, including some fluorescent colours and realistic looking metallics, such as gold and silver.
What UV-printed products do you offer?
JP: We produce all sizes of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) braille signs, along with PVC, HIPS, and acrylic signage. We also print on coasters, ID cards, golf balls, drinkware, and many other items in-house, including large volumes of promotional products.
We’ve printed several framed canvases, hundreds of water bottles and pens, thousands of hockey pucks and mini sticks, and, most recently, thousands of custom poker chips, along with three full-sized Plinko peg boards.
How has having UV print capability helped your business?
JP: Our UV printer allows us to deliver specialized products and signs quickly, as we promise in our company name.
We recently had a large order of specialized custom journal books for 84 Home Depot stores. They had a tight deadline, and no other shop could make the books and print them in the time frame they needed. We made the books and used our laser cutter to create a jig to hold each book in our UV printer. Then, we printed the store name and employee name in raised ink on each of the books. We made the deadline with plenty of time to spare.
We were also able to help out some local paramedics at an emergency medical services (EMS) company with a previously purchased giveaway. They had changed their logo and location and needed the items to be updated with the new information. We were able to print their new logo over the existing logo on 500 pieces—all in just a couple of hours.
In a nutshell, speed is probably the biggest advantage we gain from having in-house UV printing capability. In a matter of minutes, we can print on almost anything, and within a couple of hours, we can create beautiful acrylic signs with bright colours, and raised print and graphics.
