megaprintinc

New Sign printed on our Agfa Anapurna flatbed printer

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Our new sign

Our new flatbed printer is already doing great work! Here’s a new sign we printed for our building. It’s direct printed on both sides 3mm Sintra.

When I think back to the amount of work it was to make our previous sign, which was printed on adhesive vinyl and then applied to sintra, I start to appreciate how much savings there will be for customers with this new technology.

The old sign still looked great, by the way, after eight years. We just thought that we should be showing off our new capabilities, starting with the sign. People do tease us that we have such a small sign for a company that makes big prints!

Our Building

As you can see, we are sort of in the woods of New Hampshire. Don’t let the weeds fool you, though. Our building is a state-of-the-art large format shop, with 17,500 square feet of clean, modern space. It was designed specifically to do what we do, is completely wired for data and voice, air conditioned for humidity control, and lit with color correct bulbs so we get the colors right for you!

We built it in 1998, and have added on three times since then. Lately we’ve spent a fair amount of time and money beefing up our insulation to make it more energy efficient.

Flatbed Printing on Ceiling Tiles

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Here’s some fun we had experimenting with our new flatbed printer.

: Printed Ceiling Tiles

The technician who installed the machine told us it would print on anything up to 1-1/2″ thick, including things like ceiling tiles. So one of the guys found a file that looks like a hole in the roof with a couple of owls looking down, and printed it on a pair of ceiling tiles in our office. It’s striking! And, just plain fun.

We are looking forward to the additional capabilities our new machine offers. By printing direct to board, we save labor and have a more durable print. We can do a lot of things we couldn’t do before, like printing on ceiling tiles.

The UV curable inks are dry when they come off the machine, which has already come in handy for a vinyl banner order that needed to be shipped the same day. Another important quality of the UV inks is that they are pulpable, so anything printed on a recyclable stock is completely recyclable. This includes 50 point board and green board.

Posted in Flatbed printing | Tagged digital printing, Flatbed printing, large format printing, printed ceiling tiles | Comments Off

Red Sox Players Wine

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Jacoby and Heidi in front of our printing

Here’s our work being used at a press conference to introduce a wine named for Jacoby Ellsbury of the Red Sox. It raises money for charities that he designates. He’s shown here with Heidi Watney of NESN.

We print these for Charity Hop, a sports marketing agency that connects athletes, brands and worthy causes.

We can also report that the wine is pretty good!

Posted in large format printing | Tagged event signs, large format printing, Poster Printing | Comments Off

New Flatbed Printer

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Jay Buckley

: Our new flatbed printer

We’ve just installed a new flatbed printing machine that gives us much broader large format printing capabilities.

This machine prints directly onto flat goods like coroplast, foamcore board, 50 point board, sintra, and styrene. It has full 720×720 dpi resolution, and the results are excellent- comparable to what we can get on paper with our roll-fed equipment.

In particular, this machine will give us better product for sign holders in retail and banking applications. Since we print directly on the board, it’s much less labor intensive and therefore less costly. Additionally, we are finding several boards with high percentages of recycled content that can be recycled with cardboard. This gives us offerings that are very green!

Posted in Flatbed printing, large format printing | Tagged Flatbed printing, foamcore board printing, large format printing, printing on board | Comments Off

Why is there always the money to do it over?

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Jay Buckley

: Campground signs

Here’s a job that struck me as it came through. Nothing special about the job itself, it’s vinyl on styrene that makes a durable sign for a local campground.

What hit me is that we quoted the same job last year as they were getting ready to open for the season, and they thought it was going to be too expensive to do the job this way. So, they printed paper signs. Now they are doing it the right way.

I worked in construction when I was in college, and one of the guys said “we always seem to have the money to do it over, but never the money to do it right.” I thought it was brilliant philosophy then, and timeless.

I’m a big advocate for doing it right the first time. It’s almost always less expensive, and less hassle, than taking a shortcut.

Sometimes that takes a year!

Posted in Vinyl Banners | Tagged large format printing, Poster Printing, Vinyl Banners | Comments Off

Book Cover Posters

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Book cover Poster

Here’s a photo of author Robert Kozlow with a poster of the cover for his new book New Hampshire – A Photographic Journey. We do these from time to time for authors going on a book signing tour.

The author sits at a table with the poster behind, and signs books that people buy. Bookstores sell more books, and the author gets publicity.

This particular book cover is near and dear to us, since the photo is taken from the top of Mt. Morgan, one of our favorite hikes. If you are ever in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, check out the Morgan and Percival hike. As you can see from the photo, the views of Squam Lake (where On Golden Pond was filmed) are spectacular.

You can’t quite see our shop from the top of Mt. Morgan, but we are in Holderness near the highway exit. It’s a great place to live and work!

Posted in large format printing, Poster Printing | Tagged book signing poster, foamcore mounted poster, large format printing, Poster Printing | Comments Off

Fundraising Banners

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Banner for Fundraiser

When you are doing a fundraiser, there’s always the problem of letting people know what you are doing, and attracting them to participate.

Every June we have Bike Week in New Hampshire. People ride their Harleys from all over the country to attend. The Laconia Rotary Club made thisvinyl banner last year to attract people to their booth to buy a raffle ticket.

Hard to miss, don’t you think? They tell us they sold a lot of tickets!

Best of all, it’s usable every year. Our vinyl banners are durable as well as attractive.

Posted in Vinyl Banners | Tagged fundraising banner, large format printing, vinyl banner | Comments Off

Happy customer sends a picture!

Posted on April 30, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Happy Poster Customer

Here’s a happy customer telling us how much she loves her poster!

This is Marisa Lara from the State of New Hampshire Dept of Public Health presenting a poster at the CDC Diabetes Conference in Kansas City. She went to the trouble to not only send us a picture, but to make a little sign! It was her first poster presentation, and she tells us that it went really well.

One of the best things about my job is that I regularly get compliments like this, almost one every day. I know because I read them at our Friday morning meeting to recognize the people who did the work.

How many people have a job where somebody calls or emails telling you how great your service or product is? It sure makes me feel good, and I think it’s one of the things that makes this a good place to work. Thank you, Marisa!

Posted in Poster Printing | Tagged large format printing, Poster Printing, research poster, scientific poster | Comments Off

Fundraising Thermometers

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Fundraising Thermometer Print

Here’s something we do on a regular basis for organizations doing fundraising- a poster of a thermometer to show the progress of the campaign agains the goal. This kind of graphic is usually mounted on foamcore or gatorboard so that it can be stood on an easel during the campaign. The red line advances up the thermometer as giving comes in, and that’s easily done with a magic marker.

We’ve done them for churches, hospitals and theater groups, just to name a few. The power of the thermometer in fundraising is that it shows the progress, and prods donors to make their contribution. The success of measuring and showing the progress of a campaign is well known in fundraising circles.

We have a template for the thermometer, so generating one for your organization is very easy. Give us the words and the goals, and we’ll have one designed for you in a jiffy.

We’ve also done them for outdoors by printing on vinyl.

Posted in Poster Printing | Tagged fundraising thermometer, outdoor vinyl, Poster Printing | Comments Off

Golf Tournament Season Begins

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Golf Sponsor Signs

Spring is here, and everybody is getting out their golf clubs! The tournament season will be right behind. Most tournaments make some of their money by selling hole sponsorships, and we make the sponsorship signs that you see at tees and greens.

We typically put the name of sponsors onto the signs, and the tournament logo on every sign. Get us a logo, and a list of your sponsors, and the rest is done. We typically need a few days to produce them.

Tournament signs like these give your golf tournament a professional look. They also make your sponsors happy, since they are buying something that looks great. And, most of your sponsors are playing in the tournament!

Our most popular tournament signs are made on coreplast, which is plastic cardboard. We tape a U-shaped wire stake to the back, and you just jab them into the ground. They are good for years, and we find that most tournaments only need to buy a half dozen new signs each year, since most of their sponsors repeat every year.

Give them a try- people tell us all the time that these are the best looking tournament signs they have ever seen!

Posted in large format printing | Tagged golf tournament signs, large format printing, Vinyl Banners | Comments Off