Another advantage is price.

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1 8 Repro Report July/August 2008

2 Wide-format, flatbed inkjet printers have a lot of advantages compared to traditional inkjets. They can print on rigid substrates, sometimes as thick as 3 inches. Most of them use UV curable inks that dry instantly and last for years outdoors. And they re blazing fast. Another advantage is price. Because the images don t need to be mounted or laminated, the projects done on them are less expensive than jobs done on traditional digital color printers. This means the shop using a flatbed can sell the work for less than the local signmaker. These jobs are more affordable, and that makes them more competitive, says Reprographics in Kalamazoo, Mich. Kal-Blue installed an Océ 250 GT Arizona flatbed printer last November. Mark Newton, president of ARC s Midwest Division, says the GT Arizona installed at Western Blue in Kansas City, Mo., has been a success. The Arizona is an amazing versatile machine, Newton says. It allows us to engage our clients at various price points while maintaining benchmark margins. All of these advantages have led to some important new markets and fun new projects. Here are 10 ideas to whet your imagination: No. 1, Real Estate Signage You know all those for-sale signs planted around your neighborhood? Somebody printed them, and with a flatbed printer. That somebody could be you. A flatbed printer can create custom, durable real estate signs affordably and quickly. No. 2, Any Business with Branches Banks, gas stations, fast-food joints any business with multiple locations is a prime customer for the durable, customizable signage you can make with a flatbed printer. These signs can identify each branch and still keep the business logo the same. You ll be able to do them faster and more affordably than any signmaker. And since the signs last two or three years without fading, you re providing a great value to your client. No. 3, Other Printing Businesses Speaking of signs, Young says one of its local competing sign shops is now a customer of Kal-Blue s. When the job is better suited for the Arizona than the shop s traditional sign-making equipment, it orders it from Kal-Blue and marks it up. P.J. Vidani, president of Green Bay Blue in Wisconsin, also has found sign shops to be good new customers. They can t afford this kind of printer and they don t have the space for it, so I work with them, Vidani says. If you do that, you promise not to approach their customers directly. No. 4, Plastic Signage No need to mount a print onto foamcore to make signs. With a flatbed printer, you can print right onto the substrate, such as plastic. Albinson Reprographics in Minneapolis, Minn., printed tree identification signs on half-inch translucent plastic for a local conservatory. The signs were stuck right in the dirt beside the trees, with no fear that the elements would damage the images. No. 5, Trade Show Displays This is not a new market, but with the speed and cost advantages of a flatbed printer, you should be able to tap the tradeshow market more fully. Approach other tradeshow display making companies and show them that you can do their printing more efficiently than whatever method they re using now. No. 6, Doors Yes, with the right printer you can fit a door wooden, glass, steel, whatever into it and print directly to the surface. Again, you re invading the signmaker s turf, and a full-color, border-to-border door graphic should appeal to many businesses that previously were satisfied with just their name in white letters on their door. No. 7, Ceiling Tiles Restaurants, trendy retailers, even some homeowners would love to have something more exciting than a white ceiling. A flatbed printer can turn that boring ceiling into a Picasso. Roscoe Davis, large format color specialist for Western Blue, an ARC company located in Kansas City, Mo., inspects a print on acrylic. No. 8, Fleet Graphics You don t need the rigid printing capabilities of a flatbed to do fleet graphics, but the speed and UV-curable inks these printers feature make them formidable fleet graphics printers. No. 9, Point-of-Purchase Signage One new area we plan to be aggressive in is retail POP, says Reg Garner, vice president of Triangle Reprographics in Orlando, Fla., which recently installed a Durst Rho 800 Presto flatbed printer. Digital color has worked well in POP for years, but with the ability to print on so many substrates from floor tiles to freezer doors to wall panels the flatbedequipped repro shop should find a great new market in POP. No. 10, Your Traditional AEC Market Don t forget your best clients. Explain your new capabilities to your designer clients and watch their imaginations run wild. You could reproduce fine art on wall paneling for an interior designer, for example. The bottom line: A flatbed printer can be a breakthrough technology for you, if you find the right new markets for it. Continued on page 10 Repro Report 9

3 Flatbed Printers: What Tech Issues Do You Need to Consider? A flatbed printer is a huge investment anywhere from the mid-five figures to mid-six figures so it pays to know what you re looking for. Here is a list of technical issues you ll want to consider when looking at flatbed printers. Size The phrase large format used to mean documents that were 24 or 36 inches wide. Those are babies compared to the behemoths you can make with certain flatbed printers. The Raster Printers Daytona H700UV Hybrid prints on media up to 72 inches wide six feet! Sounds huge, but it s not nearly the largest. The Gandinnovations Jeti 5024 handles media more than twice that wide, up to five meters. Obviously, the size of the printer you choose will depend on the jobs you want to run. Billboards are much easier to make if you re printing on sheets 15 feet wide. But if that s not your market, save a hundred grand and get something smaller. Remember that size relates directly to the space required in your shop. A giant printer creates a giant footprint. And if you re printing on large pieces of rigid substrate, you ll need plenty of room behind and in front of your printer to handle that. Substrates One of the great things about these printers is the vast variety of substrates they can print on. As you ll read in the main feature, reprographics shops are printing on windows, doors, table tops and floor tiles, as well as every imaginable traditional substrate, such as Gatorfoam, Sintra, banner material and plain old paper. Tom Quenzer, production manager at Albinson Reprographics in Minneapolis, Minn., says they recently used their Vutek flatbed printer to create signs on half-inch thick translucent panels. We couldn t have done that job without this printer, he says. You will want to consider two things when looking at printers. First, does the printer have roll-to-roll capability? Depending on the work you re doing, this may be an important convenience. It will save you from having piles of prints on the floor in front of the printer. Second, how thick can the substrate be and still fit into the printer? The Gerber Solara ion handles materials up to 1 inch thick, which is big enough for most applications. Mutoh Toucan Hybrid can handle substrates up to 3.5 inches thick that s thicker than a door. Ink The inks for these printers are their lifeblood. They generally use UV-curable inks, which means the inks remain liquid until they are exposed to intense UV light. The light is provided by UV lamps situated after or beside the print heads. The Mimaki JF series flatbed printers, for example, have UV lamps installed on both sides of the ink cartridge, allowing for high production speeds and bidirectional printing. Roscoe Davis, large format color specialist for Western Blue, prints a poster board project on the company s Océ Arizona 250 GT flatbed printer. There are several key advantages of this system over traditional inkjets: First, since the ink remains liquid until it is UV cured, there is less clogging of ink nozzles, and less dry ink residue elsewhere in the system. Second, since the ink is dried by the UV lamps, the prints are dry and ready to use the moment they come out of the printer. No worries about finding space to lay them out or having customers wait while prints dry. 10 Repro Report July/August 2008

4 UV curable inks are also considered environmentally friendly, since they are made without heavy metals, produce very little volatile organic compounds and do not require harsh cleaners. Not all flatbed printers use UV inks, however. The Mutoh Toucan Hybrid, for example, uses solvent inks, which also produce high-quality, durable color. The colors that the inks produce vary by the system, and each manufacturer brags about the quality of the images produced by its printers. Some use more than the traditional four cartridges. The Agfa Anapurna, for example, uses eight ink tanks: cyan, magenta, yellow, black, light cyan, light magenta, cleaning and white (more on this below). Others, however, use the traditional four inks. The Océ Arizona, for instance, uses just CMYK, but the company says its VariaDot imaging technology which produces variable ink drops in sizes from 6 to 42 picoliters eliminates the need for the light cyan and light magenta cartridges and produces up to 1,440 DPI. Some UV-curable printers offer white ink. Why white ink? If you re printing on something such as stone or wood that doesn t have a nice white background to begin with. According to wide-format expert Nicholas Hellmuth of FLAAR, white inks are tough to do right because the primary ingredient, titanium dioxide, needs to be constantly stirred for proper dispersion. So be careful and ask for lots of info if you want to buy white ink. Printing on unusual substrates like glass or flexible plastics requires ink that is flexible and retains its color even when it is bent in a different shape. These characteristics are usually found in UV cured inks, because they create strong chemicals bonds with the substrate. For example, the GerberCAT inks, used with the Gerver Solara ion printer, can print onto such flexible substrates as fleet graphics. The images can be wrapped around tight corners and over rivets and still maintain their crispness. Not all flatbed printers use UV cured inks. Green Bay Blue in Wisconsin used the Océ Arizona 250 GT flatbed printer to print a variety of signage. P.J. Vidani, president of Green Bay Blue in Wisconsin, found sign shops to be good new customers. They can t afford this kind of printer and they don t have the space for it, so I work with them, he says. Longevity How long do you need your images to last? Most typical large-format color documents need to be laminated if you want them to last long outdoors, but UV cured images are another story they last two or three years outdoors with no lamination. Not having to laminate the job can be a serious time, money and supply saver. The printer is very efficient, says Reprographics in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of their Océ 250GT Arizona printer. Instead of mounting and laminating, we print directly to the board and we re done. RIPs Like any large-format printer, the files need to be run through a raster image processor (RIP) before it goes to the printer. The RIP is the essential software element of the printing system. Some printers come with a RIP the Agfa Anapurna uses a Wasatch RIP, for example while others interface with most of the common RIPs on the market. If you have a preference for a RIP or if you already use one for another printer, make sure your new flatbed is compatible. P.J. Vidani, president of Green Bay Blue in Wisconsin, says they use an Onyx RIP with their Océ Arizona flatbed printer. They were familiar with the Onyx RIP because that s what they use for their other digital color printers, so it made sense to stick with what they knew. Speed These printers can crank out images at blazing speeds. The Hewlett-Packard Designjet H45000 for example, cranks out 388 square feet per hour, while the HP Scitex FB910 produces 811 square feet per hour. An important factor in the speed of a flatbed printer is how it handles multiple jobs. The Oce Arizona, for example, is designed to switch from roll media to rigid substrates on the fly, with no downtime. Some printers, such as the Durst Rho 800 Presto, feature continuous printing, which means new boards can be fed into the printer before the previous boards stop printing. Vidani says Green Bay Blue recently had a new customer order 10 signs. He came to pick them up and was perturbed that only eight were done and was incredulous when Vidani told him the other two would be finished in 10 minutes. As they walked back to the print room the ninth was coming off the press, and a few minutes later the 10th rolled off. Both were dry to the touch and ready to take home! Continued on page 12 Repro Report 11

5 Flatbed Printers: What Business Issues Do You Need to Consider? A large-format flatbed printer is like any other piece of equipment: If you fail to plan for it, you plan to fail. When investing in a flatbed, you ll obviously consider the cost. These printers range from $50,000 to more than $300,000. But you also need to consider what type of training you ll need, space requirements and how to market the new printer. Training How much training you ll need depends on how much your staff already knows about large-format digital color and which printer you choose. If you ve been running a digital color department for a decade and will be using the same RIP to run your new flatbed, you may need next to no training. We ve been into color for eight to 10 years, and we were up and running in two or three hours, says P.J. Vidani, president of Green Bay Blue in Wisconsin, about their Océ 250 GT Arizona printer. All we had to learn were a little about the mechanics of the machine. Green Bay Blue s Brenda Baumann (left) and General Manager Amanda Johnson stand next to a print from their Océ Arizona 250 GT flatbed printer. Johnson manages the company s color department. Green Bay Blue was able to find enough new business to break even on the monthly lease in five months. Mark Newton, Midwest Division president of ARC, who installed a GT Arizona printer at Western Blue in Kansas City in the spring, had a similar experience. Ramp up time to learn the basics was short. We already have people who are familiar with large-format color, so within a couple Don t invest in a flatbed printer without a plan to market it. You ll find some work from your traditional AEC clients, but if you want to maximize your new printer, you ll need to tap new markets. That means marketing. of days we were operating the machine under normal conditions, Newton says. It has taken more time to learn some of the more sophisticated applications. Not everyone has it that easy. Tom Quenzer, production manager at Albinson Reprographics in Minneapolis, Minn., says operating their Vutek flatbed printer is more of a challenge. The Vutek s eight print heads, UV lamps, 10-foot wide print capacity and other factors make it complicated machine. There are a lot of variables you have to program in, Quenzer says. All manufacturers offer training. Some third-party consulting and training is also available, such as through FLAAR ( Space Of course, a large printer takes a lot of space. But what you need to remember with a flatbed is that if you re planning on printing on rigid substrates, you need room in front and back of the printer to accommodate them. Reg Garner, vice president of Triangle Reprographics in Orlando, Fla., says they have devoted 7,000 square feet to their new Durst Rho 800 Presto flatbed printer. Keep in mind that we plan on running pallets of 4' x 8' styrene and other substrates and need a lot of room to move the boards from the feed end of the flatbed to delivery, then to the router and finally to shipping, Garner says. Reprographics in Kalamazoo, Mich., says space has been an issue with their Océ 250GT Arizona, too. The need for space grew faster than we expected, he says. When you start producing large projects, you need space for trim tables, space to stack prints, etc. Marketing Don t invest in a flatbed printer without a plan to market it. You ll find some work from your traditional AEC clients, but if you want to maximize your new printer, you ll need to tap new markets. That means marketing. An open house is a popular idea for marketing important new pieces of equipment. Invite advertising agencies, other print shops, graphics personnel from large corporations, retailers, resort operators and of course your current customers. Demonstrate the speed, size, color and durability of the prints and you ll surely land a few new customers. Another effective marketing tool is sample prints. Take a potential client s logo or advertisement, blow it up to six feet wide, and print the giant version of a sheet of foamcore. Have your sales rep drop it off at the potential client s office with a note about your new printer you ll surely get their attention. Don t forget all of your usual marketing tactics. Promote the printer on your Web site, your on-hold message, the signature line of your s, your newsletter, a flyer, your invoices and of course during sales calls. Finally, take a shot at your local media by sending out a press release and sample prints to your local paper, radio station, TV station and news Web sites. On a slow news day, your ability to print a 10-foot-wide image just might make the front page. Ed Avis is a freelance writer in Oak Park, Ill. 12 Repro Report July/August 2008