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Wallpaper of Nautical Charts

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Jay Buckley

: Nautical Chart Wallpaper

We’ve done this a few times, and the results are spectacular! The Feds have all the nautical charts around the coast of the US available for free download at the NOAA website. The photo you see is an 8×20 foot nautical chart wallpaper from New York all the way past the Georges Banks. It’s on its way to a seaside home in Rhode Island where it will certainly be a topic of much conversation!

The only difficult thing is that the government, in their wisdom, has everything in BSB file format (whatever that is). There are links on the NOAA site that send you to places where you can download a utility to convert them to jpg or png, we used BSB Reader and it works great. The charts are really high resolution, so they have the pixel density to go up to wallpaper size pretty nicely.

If you don’t wnt to go to the hassle of converting the files, let us know where you want your charts and we’ll send you a jpg of what they look like. All part of the service!

What a great way to put up wallpaper that becomes a topic of conversation! We did a chart of Nantucket Sound for a vacation house there a few months back, and they loved it. Maybe this is the next big thing for Custom Printed Wallpaper!

Printing Special Shapes of Plastic

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Jay Buckley

: Printing a Special Shape

Rectangles are easy. Circles a little harder. Something like this- well, there’s a trick to printing special shapes. Naturally, the customer wanted it to be two sided as well, which made it trickier still.

The material we used was 1/4″ Komatex (Sintra), which we bought as the fluted shape from a supplier who can computer cut special shapes from sheets of material. One of these days we’ll be able to afford that machine, but for now it works pretty well for us to outsource.

Our challenge was then to figure out how to align the blanks to print properly, and Ken in our vinyl department figured it out. We used our UV flatbed printer and got a great result!

Of course, we bought a few extra pieces just in case we messed up. Everything ran perfectly, and we have a few of the special shaped blanks remaining. So, if you have a need for a few great looking medallions, give us a call. We can print them right away.

Posted in Flatbed printing | Tagged custom signage, Flatbed printing, printing special shapes | Leave a comment

Replacement Pop Up Booth Panels

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Jay Buckley

: Pop Up Booth

Pop-Up Booths are an easy and affordable way to do a trade show. The time will come, however, when you want to replace the graphic panels with up-to-date art. Whether it’s a logo change, new product photos, or just fresh artwork, it’s important to keep the booth looking great. They do get kicked around, and you are only going to get so many shows out your pop up booth panels before they start to look tired.

When the time comes to replace the graphic panels, we can help. Our replacement pop-up graphics can be done for less than your booth maker charges, and usually faster too.

We use our heavy duty crystal lamination that has a textured surface. It breaks the glare from show lighting while letting the colors come through brilliantly. We’ll put magnet along each side, and duplicate the plastic stiffeners that are on the top and bottom of each panel.

The whole process takes a few days. If you are in the market for replacement pop-up booth panels, give us a call!

Posted in large format printing | Tagged pop-up booth panels, replacement booth graphics | Leave a comment

Vinyl Banners That Shed the Wind

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Jay Buckley

Bungee Cord Installation

When you put a good size vinyl banner outside, especially at this time of year, there are some things to know.

First of all, you usually fix the top of the vinyl banner with a cable or chain, as has been done with this banner. The bottom connection is the trick, however. It has a bungee cord that holds it taut when the wind is not blowing, but allows it to shed the wind when it is blowing. This keeps the forces down and your vinyl banner from blowing down the street.

We can also put wind cuts in the banner that reduces it’s face area to the wind. For all banners like this, we re-enforce the corners with an extra layer of vinyl.

Our last trick, and it’s an important one, is to use a vinyl with a low cold cracking temperature. Normal vinyl banners becomes brittle at -5 fahrenheit. Vinyls with lower cold crack temperatures are available, and we use an extra heavy 16 oz vinyl with a -20 cold crack temperature for our Across the Street Banners.

We even have a vinyl banner material with a -30 cold crack temperature, which we use for the ski areas. It got down to 20 below the night before last, and they need something a little better!

Posted in Vinyl Banners | Tagged across the street banners, cold crack vinyl temperature, cold weather banners, Vinyl Banners | Leave a comment

Digital Printing on Leather

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Jay Buckley

: Flatbed Printing on Leather

OK, so this was a little different than your normal store sign. Our customer wanted to print on deerskin, and sent us a full deerskin.

Well, it was never going to get flat on the machine, so we cut it out to a rectangle. With a little fussing we got it to lay flat enough that the vacuum held it down OK. It surprised us by printing great!

The other thing we were worried about was whether the ink would crack when the leather was stretched. No! It was as supple as the deerskin.

So maybe this is something else we can do with our versatile (and more every day) flatbed printer.

Add blog to our blog directory.

Posted in Flatbed printing | Tagged flatbed printing on leather, printing on leather, UV curable printing | Leave a comment

Fund Raising Signs

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Jay Buckley

: Sintra Sign for Raising Money

When the New Hampton School wanted to put up fund raising signs showing the plans for their new hockey rink, they came to us. They had beautiful artists renderings of the new facility, and they wanted to put up poster around the existing hockey rink to help them raise money for the new one. In an environment like that, they needed something waterproof and able to withstand a little abuse. We printed with UV curable inks on 1/8″ sintra, a foamed PVC sheet that gives wonderful results.

Fund raising requires a little extra effort, and this kind of graphic is classy and effective.

Our flatbed printer stays busy doing this kind of work for people all over the country!

Posted in Flatbed printing | Tagged fund raising signs, sintra signs, waterproof large format printing | Leave a comment

Posters for Retail Stores

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Jay Buckley

: Posters at the Innisfree Book Store

Our friends at the Innisfree Book Shop had us print two posters for their holiday display. It’s the way they catch the eye of passersby to bring them into the bookstore, which is in a complex of stores in Meredith NH.

In this case, we printed the posters on paper and applied it to foamcore board. That’s because there’s about a foot of space between the window and the bookshelves- and they need something rigid to slide behind the shelves! We used our UV curable inks for this job too, since the windows get direct sunlight.

Posted in Poster Printing | Tagged retail posters, store posters, stores signs | Leave a comment

Custom Wallpaper on the Ceiling

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Jay Buckley

Toby Keith Wallpaper

Here’s one of the most challenging wallpaper jobs we have done in a long time. The customer is Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar in Rancho Cucamonga, California. The centerpiece of the bar is a guitar 83 feet long and 30 feet wide, on two levels. And it’s on the ceiling!

Posted in Custom Printed Wallpaper | Tagged ceiling wallpaper, custom printed wallpaper, custom wallpaper, wallpaper murals | Leave a comment

Interesting Similar Company

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Jay Buckley

I guest lecture in the MBA program at Plymouth State University, and one of the fun parts of it is that I often meet other entrepreneurs. Last Friday I met Alex Henkel, who runs a company call Electronic Imaging Materials in Keene NH. What I found interesting is that they have a very similar business to ours in the custom bar code area.

They use digital printing methods to produce custom bar codes for companies that need to tag things like laboratory samples. They do it on fast turnaround times, and on a wide variety of materials depending on the application.

It was interesting to hear how they do what they do, and fun to tell the students how my company works. I always learn something! Thanks Alex.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged digital posters, digital printing | Leave a comment

How to Really Make a Mess at a Trade Show

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Jay Buckley

: Booth Graphics

Murphy’s Law was probably first written by someone doing a trade show display. Here’s our experience in how to really make a mess of your booth:

1. Wait until the day before the show to design the graphics. We can print them fast, but this lends itself to mistakes. Haste makes waste!

2. Ship your booth to the show without opening it up and being sure everything is there from the last time. You’d be amazed.

3. Open the booth up the day it needs to ship, only to discover something didn’t make it back.

4. Hop on the plane without the tracking information for the stuff you are shipping to the show. Don’t verify that it all got there before you get on the plane.

5. Failing to have a box full of velcro, tape, tools, and all the other things you need to put up your booth and make last minute repairs.

6. Have nothing to clean things up with before the show opens. Moistened towelettes are great!

7. Ship your graphics in an already weakened half smashed cardboard box.

8. Forget to order electricity, carpet, furniture, etc. for the booth.

9. Leave the records of what you ordered and already paid for at home.

10. Last but not least, hop on a plane that will get you to the show an hour before it opens. If it’s on time.

We’ve got some great suggestions for first time trade show exhibitors at Trade Show 101. Happy trade show!

Posted in Trade Show Graphics | Tagged pop-up booth panels, trade show booths, trade show graphics, trade show things to avoid | Leave a comment