Unique Sign Fixture

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Jay Buckley
fixture for counter sign

Counter Sign

Often the method of fixturing a sign is the bigger deal than printing the sign itself. Here’s a creative solution employed by Meredith Village Savings Bank, our good customer.

In this case, they wanted to have a good size (22×28″) sign on the counter, but they had no wall to hang it on, and anything standing on the small counter would have been subject to being knocked over by the public.

Their solution was to put a slot in the counter top, into which the acrylic holder is inserted. This gives them a stable and durable sign holder. We print their signs on .040 sintra, which is rigid enough to be easily inserted and removed, and stays flatter than paper will over time.

Posted in Flatbed printing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Better Banner Stand

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Jay Buckley
affordable banner stand

New Retractable Banner Stand

We have just introduced a new retractable banner stand that is both affordable and attractive. We call it our standard banner stand.

It has an extruded aluminum base that has great eye appeal. It’s sturdy and good looking.

Of course, what you really want is for your customer to look at the graphics, and this one has what you need. The roll up graphic is 35.5″ wide and extends to 83″ tall. We print on an 11 mil poly film that has a light blocking layer

Price is $339 if you buy one, and we can sell them for $299 when you order 10 or more. They are in stock, so lead time is usually a day or two.

Try our new standard retractable banner stand- you’ll love it!

Posted in Banner Stands | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Wallpaper in a Hurry

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Jay Buckley
custom wall mural in a restaurant

Restaurant Wallpaper

Here’s a photo of a great looking wallpaper mural we did recently for a Skyline Chili restaurant in Kentucky. It looks terrific!

What really sets this job apart, though, was how fast we did it. They needed to shoot a TV commercial and the wallpaper had to be up fast. We turned the job around in a day and a half, it got there on time, was installed over the weekend, and they shoot the commercial tomorrow.

All in a day’s work! We’ll get your wallpaper mural done on time, in budget, and beautifully too!

Posted in custom wall murals | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Digitally Printed Signs

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Jay Buckley
Building layout sign for fire egress

Fire Exit Floor Plan

Digital printing is just about the only way to make a way-finding building plan sign. We flatbed printed this one on DiBond, which is a sandwich of aluminum and tough plastic. Given that the signs would be in harms way in a middle school, that seemed sensible.

We printed four of these building plan signs, identical except for the “you are here” location. They look terrific, and since they are printed with our UV curable inks, are very durable. If the kids write on them with magic marker or spray paint, they can be cleaned without dissolving the UV ink.

Evidently these had been produced years ago with cut vinyl- man what a tough way to do line drawings!  We had these off our machine in less than an hour for all four pieces, and they were beautiful- and  affordable. They can be done in four color this way too.

Posted in Flatbed printing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Machine Placement Templates

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Jay Buckley
template for machine location

Machine Placement

Here’s something that we can do that I never thought would be a part of the business, but has turned out to be!

When placing a machine in a factory environment, you need to pretty accurately locate the bolts that will hold it down. On a couple  of occasions, we have printed 5 ft wide prints to be laid out on the floor for marking the bolt locations. We have printed on a polypropylene film, which doesn’t stretch, and this makes a great template for machine location.

We use a 60″ graphics plotter that will accurately reproduce very large pieces. If you need wider than 60″, we can print in strips with alignment marks that allow pieces to be set down accurately and then taped together.

Posted in large format printing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Museum Wallpaper

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Jay Buckley
gray scale prints as museum wallpaper

Museum Wallpaper

Every now and then we do a custom wallpaper job that’s close enough to home to visit. We did this job for  the McAuliffe-Shepard Planetarium in Concord, NH. When we had it laid out on the floor in our shop we thought it was pretty cool. On the wall in the planetarium, it is absolutely spectacular!

Some of it is the quality of the photo, which I imagine is courtesy of NASA. It was of terrific quality and fantastic detail even at the 12×12 foot size. We printed it at 720 dpi on smooth wallpaper. It was also installed beautifully by Gerald Poirier of Chester NH. The seams are just about invisible and perfectly aligned.

All in all, it is one of the best jobs we’ve done and it’s great to have it so close to home!

Posted in Custom Printed Wallpaper | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Custom Cut Condo Unit Numbers

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Jay Buckley
plastic cut numbers for apartments and condos

Condo Unit Numbers

Normally when we do CNC routing, we are also doing printing, but this job was a little different. We custom cut the numbers for a condo association that heard we had a CNC router.

The material is a hugely rugged 1/2″ thick material called Color Core. In this case, it has a white face on either side, and a solid core of black. It comes in a number of color choices, however. The material is a very tough high density polyethylene, and will last for centuries. Their old wooden unit number signs had gotten pretty lousy after about 20 years. Since the numbers are cut into the plastic, there’s no paint to flake off!

The next time you need a set of numbers for apartments, condos, or even industrial locations, give this material a try!

Posted in die cut signs | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Installing Custom Wallpaper

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Jay Buckley
custom wallpaper installation

Installing Wallpaper

Doing the installation of custom wallpaper is sort of like any other wallpaper job. Except- we are doing a large image, like the background at the right, and every piece of custom wallpaper is different. So, what you get from us is strips of wallpaper about 4 feet wide, numbered from left to right.

Each strip overlaps the last by an inch. Once you have the second piece up and lined up, you cut though both layers in the overlap, and pull away the excess from above and below. Brush it all back down, and you have a butt joint that’s very hard to see. Since you cut through both layers at the same time, they match perfectly, even if you didn’t cut a very straight line.

Other than that, it goes up like any other strip of wallpaper. When you are done, you have a beautiful mural that gives your space the exact look and feel that you want!

Posted in Custom Printed Wallpaper | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Fabric Posters- Accept no substitutes!

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Jay Buckley
Fabric research conference poster

Fabric Poster

We’ve been making foldable fabric research posters for a little over three years now. It’s amazing to me how well the acceptance of this product has gone! Over a third of the posters we make these days are done on foldable fabric.

What’s also amazing to me is that nobody else has really figured out how to do it. We have seen posters printed on fabric from the competition, and they are just terrible! One of them, solvent printed on fabric, smells so bad that it will drive you from the room. Who would put that in with your clothes?

Another company’s fabric poster is so dull and lifeless that it’s shocking. Are we the only people who profile the materials we print on so that the colors render accurately? Sure the setup costs a few thousand dollars, and you spend some time and material doing the workup. Still, it’s what you need to do in order to print the job properly. We are dedicated to doing that, others it seems, not so much.

We’ve spent a lot of time and effort finding the right fabric and ink system combination to give you printing of fabric that looks just like printing on paper. That’s why we are the best in the fabric poster printing business!

Posted in large format printing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Durable Meeting Signs

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Jay Buckley
durable meeting signs

Meeting Sign

We make a lot of foamcore mounted event signs every year about this time, graduation season being what it is.

This year the people at WPI wanted graduation signs that could be used year after year. We suggested that they use Ultraboard, which is like foamcore except it has plastic on either side of the styrofoam, instead of paper. That means the event signs are more durable, and that they won’t warp with changes in humidity.

These signs can get wet, and you can wipe them off with a sponge or damp cloth. We direct print on them with our UV curable printer which makes them tough and stable in sunlight. While Ultraboard signs are a little more expensive than foamcore, they should last for a lot of years, making them less expensive for the long haul!

Posted in Flatbed printing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment