Wide Receivers: A Flatbed Applications Photo Gallery

Glass. Acrylic. Wood. Rocks. Beeswax. UV flatbed printers have come a long way, and the range of applications they can produce—and the materials they can print on—is growing every day. For the most part, they are limited only by users’ imaginations and creativity. 

In this photo gallery, we highlight some recent projects that users have produced using flatbed UV printing equipment. I hope that these ideas serve as “food for thought” in developing creative applications for clients. Very often half the battle is just letting customers know what’s possible. 

Based in Sandy, Ore., Moon Shadow Glass’ clients are comprised of architects, designers, contractors and manufacturers across the country. The company used its H1625 LED printer to produce direct-to-glass interior décor for the Mariota Sports Performance Center at the University of Oregon, one of America’s premier collegiate sports training facilities. (Photo by Kris Iverson, Moon Shadow Glass)

Moon Shadow Glass printed double-sided life-sized murals of prominent pachyderms—Packy, Rose II and Lilly—for the Oregon Zoo’s Elephant Land exhibit. These images were printed direct-to-glass on an EFI H1625 LED printer. (Photo by Kris Iverson, Moon Shadow Glass)

Mimaki printed on an acrylic purse using its UJF-6042 MkII with LUS-170 inks. The honeycomb pattern is printed using clear ink and the bee is a glitter application with primer.

Flatbed printers can be used to print on jewelry. Mimaki printed this foil application with primer on acrylic with its UJF-3042 MkII EX with LH-100 inks.

Likewise, David Kearsley of Sign It Now/Gravity Graphics in Victor, Ida., uses a Roland LEJ-640FT UV flatbed printer to print custom designs on agate and jade for his client, Burnt Fern. Printing on rocks—which don’t come in standard shapes or sizes—poses challenges in terms of sizing and placement. 

Packaging is a top application for flatbed devices—especially short-run, customized “luxury” packaging. Montréal, Québec’s Madovar Packaging produces luxury gift boxes, and produced these items on a soft-touch laminated substrate using a Mimaki JFX200-2513.

swissQprint offers its users a “Creative Challenge” contest. Schilder Systeme, based in Oberndorf, Austria, was a Creative Challenge winner with this “Reception Bikes” hotel signage, which incorporated a variety of different effects including engraving and relief printing. It was printed on a swissQprint Impala.

Another buzzworthy swissQprint Creative Challenge winner was Laumont Photographics, based in Long Island City, N.Y. “Membrane” is a combination of sculpture and printing on a substrate that not many printers use: beeswax. It was printed on a swissQprint Impala.

Back in the 1990s, digital art was one of the earliest applications for wide-format printers, and flatbeds have allowed artists to give their imaginations even freer reign. “Das Ziel” was an exhibition by Thomas Koch, based in Hamburg, Germany, with output produced by Alpha Sign AG, Hünenberg, Switzerland. This was a 37 x 63-inch work printed on raw wood on a swissQprint Oryx. 

CR&A Custom, based in the Los Angeles area, recently installed a 98-inch HP Latex R2000 Plus Printer, capable of printing on both rigid and flexible materials. The company recently launched a new web-to-print signage business, HashtagCutouts (hashtagcutouts.com), through which event guests can share images of social media tags. The words and colors are customizable and produced on rigid substrates. It also illustrates the value of having contour-cutting capabilities.

CR&A Custom also used its HP Latex R2000 Plus to print direct-to-wood with white ink. 

Specialty printing is also being enabled by flatbed printers, especially the smaller benchtop UV models from the likes of Roland and Mimaki, the latter of which printed this stainless steel water bottle on the UJF-6042 MkII, which offers a “Kebab” accessory to print on cylindrical objects. 

These examples were all we had space for—unless we start printing this magazine itself in wide format.

I am always on the lookout for new and creative wide-format printing applications and projects. Have you worked on something unique and of which you are proud? Feel free to share them with me at [email protected].