Big Printer doesn’t have to mean Big Prints.
Posted by Rick Sader on April 10, 2011 at 8:19 amBig printers are a must if you need big prints. Large vinyl or fabric banners, full-sized window graphics, vehicle wraps, etc. are best produced using a machine at least 54″ wide. But this same printer can also be used to produce small prints in large quantities quickly & efficiently. This is especially true if the printer is equipped with an integrated contour cutter. This means that any complicated two-dimensional shape can be cut to produce beautiful inkjet decals.
Lone Eagle has the Roland 545ex printer/cutter which is used to make all of the vibrant & durable graphics mentioned above. In this post, I’ll show you how the same equipment can be used to produce hundreds of custom printed & cut decals quickly. A recent client ordered 1600 wine labels printed onto adhesive-backed vinyl & contour cut around the perimeter. The machine deftly does a “kiss cut” around each printed label that cuts only the adhesive-backed vinyl but not the underlying release liner. The client then only needs to peel them off of the backing and apply them to the bottles and/or boxes.
In this example, simple rectangles were cut around the printed labels. But any intricate 2D shape can also be produced with this printer/cutter. The applications include things like window & wall decals used for interior design, retail/POP graphics, vehicle graphics, etc. The trick is to use Adobe Illustrator to include cut lines in your graphic design. These cut lines are non-printing lines that are recognized by the printer.
This video shows you what I mean. After about 100 labels were printed, the machine pulls the media back into the printer and starts to cut around each label. Check it out:
But wait! There’s more! It’s even possible to print your design, remove the print from the printer, zip it thru the laminator to add a clear protective laminate, and then re-insert the media into the machine for contour cutting. This is a great way to produce durable contour-cut graphics for vehicle wraps. I like to use reflective vinyl for the cut lettering that goes over a wrap. It really adds an awesome effect.
“No Man is an Island.”
Posted by Rick Sader on October 27, 2010 at 1:17 pmBeing in business FOR yourself doesn’t mean being in business BY yourself. A recent wall mural project was yet another example of why this is so true.
I was recently contacted by a local architectural firm to produce a wall mural. Over the years, I would occasionally stop in to this firm’s office to give them various print samples used for window graphics, non-slip floor graphics, wall murals, etc. So one day, when one of their clients asked about getting a big wall mural, they thought of Lone Eagle. Nice! So the local architects were my first partner.
Typically, a new mural job involves working with the client to determine what kind of image they have in mind for their space. Then it’s time to hunt down the right stock photography, or hire a photographer, or design the proper vector graphics, or some combination of those. In this case, the client had already picked out the image they wanted from the stock of a local photographer. Luckily, he had shot it using 6×7 medium format film. Whew! So, now I had identified my second partner in this job.
The next step was to get the photographer’s med-format film into the hands of a high-end professional with a drum scanner. In this case, the film was scanned at 11,000 ppi, using the proper bit depth and color mode which then gave me a beautiful digital file to work with. So now my third partner successfully completed his portion of this job.
Now it was my turn. The 10’ x 25’ wall mural was printed in seven ten-foot long strips at 720dpi, 16-pass using a Roland 545ex eco-SOL printer. The media used was Dreamscape’s vinyl wall mural media. The client picked out the “Mystical” texture – good choice. After printing & drying overnight, each panel received two coats of Dreamscape’s Protex3 satin-finish liquid laminate. This gives the prints a beautiful surface finish as well as protection from water, dirt, pollution, smudging, fade, etc. So I guess you could say that my media supplier was my fourth partner since I’ve asked them lots of questions over the years and buy lots of my supplies from them.
My fifth and final partner in this job was the installer. It’s easy to image everything going well up to this point but then turning out terrible if the installation wasn’t right. My partner here was a local wallpaper hanger and he did an outstanding job. Man, this guy knows his stuff. I inspected the mural when he was done & I was impressed that the seams were so smooth and the image lined up so well. Partner #5 rocks!
Here’s a photo of the end result. When the client gets some time, they’ll build a hardwood border around the perimeter to frame it in. When I get some time, I’ll forward the link to this blog post to all of my partners and say “thanks” for a job well done – by ALL of us.
“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
Posted by Rick Sader on October 24, 2010 at 10:22 amA new client called me the other day in desperate need to get his tradeshow graphics printed quickly and shipped across the country the next day. He had had a bad experience with a different print shop. At the last minute, the other shop had delivered a bunch of tradeshow banners that were just awful; the black was a dull brownish color, the product photos looked “furry” (really… furry!), there was lots of banding, and the contrast was off. He showed me one…. these banners looked horrible. Later, when he picked up his graphics from my shop, he was thrilled and told me how ‘lucky’ I was that I could do such great work so quickly.
After he left, I thought to myself “LUCKY?! Hmmmmm….maybe I WAS lucky.”
• ‘lucky’ that I had purchased a $30k, state-of-the-art mild-solvent inkjet printer.
• ‘lucky’ that I had made a beautiful ICC profile for the media he wanted.
• ‘lucky’ that I had enough ink & media on hand to complete his entire job quickly.
• ‘lucky’ enough to know to print at 720dpi, 16-pass (i.e., high-quality mode) in order to get the high print quality necessary for display at a tradeshow.
• ‘lucky’ enough to have on my website a method for him to conveniently upload his eight 380MB files to my shop overnight (www.YouSendIt.com).
Well, as you may have guessed by now, none of this is luck at all. All of the capabilities listed above were the result of careful forethought and preparation. The other shop didn’t have a decent ICC profile (they didn’t even know what an ICC profile IS!!). And they printed in “production mode”, i.e., low resolution & low number of passes in order to just crank the job out fast. As a result, there was absolutely NO control over color, ink limits, linearization, etc…. a sure recipe for terrible print quality.
The title of this blog entry is a quote from Samuel Goldwyn, the filmmaker. I’m not sure exactly what he was referring to at the time, but I’m willing to bet it was in response to someone accusing him of being ‘lucky’ upon seeing his success.
It’s time to get “rough” with your graphics.
Posted by Rick Sader on September 2, 2009 at 5:28 pmThat’s right, you heard me… yeah, you. It’s time to get rough with your graphics. Large-format graphics applied to rough surfaces, that is.
Some new materials from 3M allow digitally-printed graphics to be applied to cinder block walls, concrete walls, stone work, even brick walls; places ordinary adhesive-backed vinyl would no doubt fail. 3M has developed their rough surface wall wrap materials that are “sticky” enough to adhere to these irregular surfaces and “soft” enough so that when applied, they conform to all the little nooks & crannies. The end result is that the graphics look like they were painted onto these surfaces. The trick is in the installation process. A heat gun and a soft, heat-resistant roller are used to “push” the graphics into the surface features. These materials are being used now in sports stadiums, schools, public buildings, fountains, monuments, restaurants….. anyplace where a rough, hum-drum surface needs some sprucing up.
I recently installed a 6′ x 5′ school mascot logo in the gym of The Toppenish High School, a beautiful new high school in WA state. The vector graphics were printed on 3M’s 8524 media and then laminated with 8624 clear, glossy laminate. These were then contour cut around the perimeter of the logo to give the look we wanted. The following photos show the finished graphic installed on a painted cement wall and the happy school administrators.
Wall murals for the 21st century.
Posted by Rick Sader on March 25, 2009 at 7:32 am
Murals have been painted on walls for centuries. Various artists have used their various styles and considerable talents to paint wall murals ranging from realistic, to fantasy, to Tromp L’Oeil (fool the eye), to abstract. They can produce fabulous results for your home or office or other place of business. Me? I couldn’t paint my way out of a wet paper bag. I can’t even draw a tic-tac-toe grid straight. But as a highly-caffeinated, 
former HP engineer who now owns a digital print shop, I know how to produce great-looking wall murals pretty quickly, with a wide variety of styles, and on a huge range of really cool media using large-format digital printing.
It all starts in the design phase. What look do you want for your Italian restaurant, or hair design salon, or wine bar, or corporate office, or home? A huge range of ready-to-go stock photography exists or a digital photographer can be commissioned to get exactly the image you need. Or the graphics you want can be designed digitally. Some of the most talented 
artists around now work digitally, producing all of the styles mentioned above using not paint & brushes but Photoshop & Illustrator. Their brush is a mouse and their paints are pixels. The artwork you want can be created, customized, and modified quickly to get exactly what you want.
A huge range of media exists for producing the mural with large-format digital printing. Vinyl media embossed with various textures are available that look like canvas, leather, suede, a rough plaster finish, smooth,
sandblasted, paper maché, …you name it. These over-lapping prints are then installed like ordinary wallpaper with ordinary wallpaper adhesive to produce any size mural you’d like. Other interesting media include fabrics with a low-tack adhesive on the back. This allows the graphics to be easily repositioned, removed, and re-used without leaving adhesive residue on the walls.
In mid March ’09, I had a successful collaboration with a traditional wall mural painter to produce an 8’x25’ wall mural for a new restaurant in Woodinville, WA. How? Ann Fiser painted a beautiful, colorful, & fun mural at ½-scale (still pretty big) and then had it professionally 
photographed by Alex Rubin. The (very large) digital file was then transmitted to me for scaling up and large-format digital printing onto a matte-finish media specifically made for wall murals. The seven, large, over-lapping strips were then hung with typical wallpaper paste by Steve Orban, a professional wallpaper hanger. The owners at Teddy’s Bigger Burgers in Woodinville, WA love the end result. For more info, see the lead article in this month’s Lexjet’s “Expand” newsletter (volume 4, number 4). Lexjet is a supplier of large-format equipment, media, ink, & other supplies.