Mugging it up!

RTFM

Yes, the first time I had to look that one up too. Something about ‘reading’ the freaking manual. Something I am want to do after everything else fails.

So here’s the story.

We recently got a mug press for dye sublimating coffee mugs. Kevin Lumberg From Johnson Plastic (https://www.johnsonplastics.com/) was instrumental in helping us out. (Be sure to check out the dye-sub blanks and imagine the possibilities dye sub has to offer)

This was primarily to do our own coffee mugs for the office and to have mug capabilities. So I ‘read’ the manual, set the press up, did some test prints and sublimated a couple of mugs. Results looked pretty good, so as I am want to do, I had to see just how much I could push the limits of the press size-wise.

I wanted to cover as much of the mug as possible. What I found is that there was a reason there was a

template and that the press, like all presses, has some limitations on the perimeter. And if you get too close to the edge of limitation, it is just not going to sublimate cleanly.  There just isn’t enough heat generated to give a clean edge. So I backed off the size and went back to the template.

I made a few ‘personalized’ mugs using my own artwork, after all, personalization is what digital printing and dye sublimation are all about.

And of course, this is where I pushed the limit on the mug press.

RTFM SOME MORE!

The manual clearly states that the mug press needs to be cooled down after extended use. But it doesn’t really state why. So ‘reading’ the manual, can be different from understanding the process. The reason is similar to the edge effect above.

Heat and heat dissipation.

For the edge effect above, there is not enough heat to heat the part of the mug that is not covered by the heating element.

In the base effect below, the bottom of the mug acts as a heat sink drawing heat away from that area giving incomplete dye sublimation. As the whole mug press heats up over an extended time, the thermocouple thinks the ‘mug’ is actually hotter than it really is.

So after letting the heat press cool back down, per the manual, great results are easy to obtain.

As I said, the idea was for us to do mugs for our own use. Ryan Arakaki, our Advertising and Events Manager created some nice artwork for the mugs that included a round feature. However, when sublimated this round feature turned into an oval.

Yes, of course, I could have done the math to determine the amount of distortion expected on a cylindrical surface.  http://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2012/bridges2012-513.pdf

And then claimed it was anamorphic art.  But instead, I just eyeballed it in Photoshop.

GET HELP FROM A PRO

So I turned these over to Andy Lewellen, our Mar-Com & Promotions Admin who actually did the real work to make our mugs. I think normally, this is where I would provide a link to the Mutoh store where you could buy these mugs, but right now the only way you can use one of these mugs is to stop by our Phoenix location and visit in person.

However, if you have any of our various dye sublimation printers from the VJ-628 Virtuoso (https://www.johnsonplastics.com/sublimation/sublimation-equipment/sublimation-printers/sawgrass-virtuoso-vj628-large-format-sublimation-printer) to the high speed 4 headed 1948WX that I used for my images, all you need is a heat press and some mugs to make your own.

Find out more about our Dye-Sublimation printers by using these links:

https://www.mutoh.com/products/valuejet-1624wx/

https://www.mutoh.com/products/rj-900x/

Free Whitepaper: 3 Things You Should Know About Dye Sublimation

Do You Need FlexiSIGN Training?

Just like physical training for the body, training for your business can add muscle to your profits! MUTOH ValueJet wide format printers come with FlexiSIGN and many shops use FlexiSIGN & Print in their shops for design and production of wide format printing.

FlexiSIGN Training from the Expert

Like physical training, sometimes you need a coach and the better your coach the better your results! Mark Rugen, Dir. of Product Marketing & Education for MUTOH AMERICA is the world’s expert in FlexiSIGN training. When he came to MUTOH, he decided that users of FlexiSIGN needed more than just software training. He decided he needed to share his 30 years of real-world shop experience in the sign and graphics market.

Wide Format Printing Workflows

Wide format printing workflows are critical for greater profits. You’ve invested thousands in a wide format printer, you need to pay that investment off and you

may also need to make a steady income to support the growth of your company as well as sustain the income of your employees. Doesn’t it make sense to be the best you can be with your design and production software?

Think about it. The typical flow in your shop is, find a customer or have one walk into your shop. They want a message and maybe a graphic along with it. Now they want that enlarged, put on a banner or some other substrate and they would like to have it in the afternoon or the next day! How fast could you get this done is they bring you a low-resolution image about 2×2 inches and want it printed 2×2 feet? What is they want you to use the same font in a photo they are showing you? Could you find that font in few seconds or would it take you minutes or hours? What if they said you just have to match a certain Pantone color? Could you do this with ease?

MUTOH Training is Different

MUTOH training is different because we are not only going to teach you about FlexiSIGN & Print, or about your MUTOH or another printer (you should have bought a ValueJet, LOL) and color management, but we are going to show you how to save media, how to match colors, how to get the job done in record time with other tools I’ve used in my 30 years in the business. MUTOH training is a real world, real shop training not some powerpoint presentation.

What Other Are Saying About MUTOH Training

Don’t take my word for it! Here are just a few examples of what graduates of the MUTOH training series are saying:

“Mark truly understands the program from the inside out. He explains efficiently the strengths of the program along with its limitations.” Jeff Fredwich – SIGNARAMA Willow Grove

“Learned a lot that I thought I already knew.” Akhay Putri – Avery Dennison

“Best software training class I have EVER attended!” – Adrienne Latiolias, AWA Printing

“Mark explains things in an easy to understand way for beginners!” Josh Munn, Munn Enterprises, Inc.

Your Next Step….INVEST!

Look, it’s time to get even better at your job. It’s time to take the small step of investing in a MUTOH FlexiSIGN training seminar. Here’s a link to find out where we will be. I only have a few seats left in BOSTON on June 6,7. Just do it!

BOSTON             June 6,7           https://www.thinkmutoh.com/event/flexisign-workshop-boston-ma-june-6-7-2018/?v=e748b7c8fd06

Los Angeles      August 15,16     https://www.thinkmutoh.com/event/flexisign-workshop-los-angeles-ca-august-15-16-2018/?v=e748b7c8fd06

Phoenix             Sept 5,6             https://www.thinkmutoh.com/event/flexisign-workshop-los-angeles-ca-august-15-16-2018/?v=e748b7c8fd06

Got questions? Just email me: mrugen@mutoh.com

BONUS!

Look I know its a lot to ask for you to take a few days away from your shop. I owned a shop I really do know its tough! So to sweeten the offer, I am giving away a FlexiSIGN Training DVD to everyone that attends. That’s a $299 value and its loaded with over 20 hours of FLexiSIGn training to augment your live class!

I’ve also got some really cool secret stuff that only graduates of the MUTOH FlexiSIGN and Color Management training class receive, plus you gain access to our exclusive FlexiSIGN Training Graduates Facebook page where you’ll be able to interact with hundreds of other FlexiSIGN graduates and get the expert help you need in the future!

In Case You Don’t Cotton to Dye Sublimation

By Randy Anderson, Product Marketing Manager-MUTOH AMERICA INC

Printing on Cotton Fabric…Something to Think About

In case you don’t cotton to dye sublimation, there is always…………well………cotton.

Or wool, or even silk and other fabrics. Printing on cotton fabric with a textile printer of course just one choice.

The textile market is in a growth mode for digital printing. There is probably less than 20 percent of all textile now being printed digitally. Last stats I saw were around 3%, but talking to a supplier of single pass printers at the show, that number is growing at an incredible rate, and may currently be hovering around the 20% mark. And speaking of Mark

This is Mark Sawchak.

Expand Systems Fabric

Mark is standing behind a chair supplied to us for the ISA 2018 show (https://www.signs.org/) by Mark’s wife Ann. Mark and Ann are the driving forces behind their company Expand Systems LLC

(http://www.expandsystems.com/). And the chair they provided was a HUGE hit at the show.

The chair was covered in cotton printed directly with the pigment process and shows a wide range of color and style that direct to textile pigment printing brings to the home décor and upholstery industry.  The fabric used is Expands’ PREMex brand

of media, (http://premexsolutions.com/fabrics.html) which is a top quality line of fabrics suitable for a wide range of applications and industry.  All of our show images were printed on Expands’ PREMex linen and twill.

The following  images were printed on Expands’ PREMex linen and twill with an 8 color Mutoh inkset on the ValueJet 1938TX

Yes, I know I ranted and raved about how much attention the backlit dye sub got, but in all fairness, the combination of the chair and the backlit was THE nice attention getter and conversation starter for textiles in the Mutoh booth.

Expand Systems provides Digital Textile Printing Solutions that cover pretty much the entire gamut of digital direct printing.  From MS LaRio (http://www.msitaly.com/) printing at some 75 linear meters per minute to the entry-level and sample capable ValueJet 1938TX (https://www.mutoh.com/products/valuejet-1938tx/) printing at 7 to 28 linear meters per hour.

It still takes a minimum of fabric to make a run with a single pass printer so the ValueJet 1938TX for perfect for small runs, samples, prototyping and high resolution/ high-quality prints.

Imagine as a designer sending your latest designs overseas for sample printing, with no real control over your designs, your intellectual property.  Now imagine keeping your designs in-house and having absolute control over your ideas and designs, until production starts or product is released. All that is doable and inexpensive, with the Mutoh ValueJet 1938TX.

Perfect for Short Runs and Sampling

Want a sample,  a single image or a production facility? Mutoh has an answer. The ValueJet 1938TX is the culmination of over a decade of work around the Mutoh platform by companies like Yuhan Kimberly, Expand and Mutoh to produce an easy to use, effective, and inexpensive printer for the textile market.

You can sit on your designs (or just wear them) until YOU are ready to show the world.

If you are not ready for a printer of your own, there are many options to get your designs printed and fabric produced to make your own home décor items, craft items or just to stretch your creativity.

The Spoonflower Example

Spoonflower (https://www.spoonflower.com/) is one of Expands customers and have for years provided Spoonflower with Mutoh based textile printers for direct printing on a variety of textiles.

Spoonflower started with a single Mutoh based textile printer, and at one time had dozens of them running their production, and their orders typically fit inside a small envelope mailer – that’s how they built their business.

Some of their customers bought enough printed fabric that it made sense for them to purchase their own direct to textile and dye-sub printers and produce for themselves and other.

One of those customers is Dee Dee Davis of Décor Print, Custom Digital Textile Printing  (www.decor-print.com), who started with one Mutoh based textile printer from Expand Systems, and now has a shop that has multiple direct printers and dye sublimation to cover the full range of textile digital printing.

So with some 80% or more of textile NOT being digitally, and the rise of personalization hitting the home décor market and business branding market there is plenty of opportunities to produce and sell digitally printed textiles.

Be sure to visit our product website where we have numerous choices in textile printers available. www.mutoh.com

Textile Printing & More. An Interview with Rachel Nunziata with 4Walls.

Textile Printing & More

In this great short interview listen to Rachel Nunziata talk about her business and concentrate on how you can take advantage of this grow textile print business. Starting and growing a textile printing business is not difficult but can be if you don’t have the right training & education. After the interview, find out more about how MUTOH can fill this education gap.

Digital Printing Hits a Wall. And the Floor. And Your Sofa.

Published on May 14, 2018 by WhatTheyThink?

Rachel Nunziata, Product Development Manager for 4Walls, talks about the design process for digital décor. 4Walls designs and prints wallcoverings and a wide variety of other materials, handling the process all the way from design through production.

Industry Leaders – Rick Hatton, Randy Anderson & Butch Anton at ISA 2018

Randy Anderson Meets with Industry Leaders at ISA 2018

I thought I’d share some things about the industry leaders I met at ISA 2018.

I wrote about Rick Hatton from Banner Ups on my blog – https://www.thinkmutoh.com/light-up-your-life-your-artwork-and-your-brand/?v=e748b7c8fd06

Rick introduced me to Keder Tape, an adhesive silicon strip for SEG frames.

So at ISA I went over to finally meet Rick and others from Banner Ups (https://bannerups.com/), and who do you think I saw working the Banner Ups ISA booth?  (https://www.signs.org/isasignexpo) Butch “Superfrog” Anton (http://www.superfrog.com/).

Butch was the first sign artist that I had met and talked with, and I don’t remember which show it was, but I remembered Butch. It has been more than a decade, but his insight and advice changed the way I looked at signs. I had always been under the impression that signage was strictly informative.

My Transformation

Being a tech guy, for me signs told me what I needed to know, but being a wannabe artist, what Butch was talking about captured my interest. Butch was displaying at the show, but mostly he was talking about what he knew – signage. Patient and understanding, I bet we talked for half an hour, I was fascinated by what he was telling me. Butch was telling me about ‘Branding’ long before I remember hearing the term in the industry. Butch explained that signage’s effective role was about not only transferring information but by capturing and creating an ‘image’ that reflects the goals behind the sign and produces an emotion that reinforces that image.

I am sure that those weren’t his exact words and I hope I am accurate enough in conveying his message.

In any case, I recommend that you reach out to Butch and Rick and take advantage of their skill sets and sage advice to improve your business and signage.

MUTOH Can Help

Here at MUTOH, I bring with me those same ideas and I am happy to report that my professional colleagues also have the same thinking about being creative in messaging. Working with MUTOH printers is also great because they have features that fit that same philosophy about creativity. When you use a MTUOH printer, you don’t have to worry about the hardware and can focus on creativity and communication, the foundation of a good sign.

Want more info about MUTOH printers?

[ninja_form id=6]

Unleash Your Imagination

by Randy Anderson, Product Marketing Manager

Mutoh America

“Wrapping” the INSIDE of your car.

There has been so much talk and focus on custom car wraps for the outside of the car, but very little about customizing the interior of the car.

Ok, there has been a little wrapping of individual parts inside the car, and now some ‘hydrographics’, but what seems to be mostly missing are the textile applications for the cars’ interior.

Vehicle Headliners?

One that intrigued me recently is headliners for vehicles.

It started with something like this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbMVH8mFjRc that I found on youtube.

When I got to Pinterest it gave me more of an idea of just how common this might be and how it could be a solution for damaged or loose headliners.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/308567011940623906/

The sad part of this is that I don’t recall ever seeing custom headliners for custom wrapped cars when I had mine wrapped.

It would have been nice to put in a custom themed headliner and visors in my Rodeo.

Seems like dye sublimation would be a perfect application for both of those, and the range of fabrics available would make it pretty easy to keep the same texture look and feel with custom imagery.

Dye sublimation would work to do the door panels and maybe some matching mats – http://dyetrans.com/products.php?webmaincat=sub_prods&websubcat=car_mats

I got rid of the Rodeo a couple of years ago before Mutoh released the direct to a textile printer the ValueJet 1938TX.

I am driving a Juke now, with a sunroof, so there isn’t much of a headliner there, but it sure would be nice to wrap the Juke and create custom seat covers with the TX with visors to match….

But that would be another blog entry for the future……

**************************************************************************************************

Learn more about our full line of textile and dye-sublimation printers.

www.mutoh.com

UNDERSTANDING INTERIOR DÉCOR: SOURCES AND INSPIRATION

This is a great blog we thought you might find interetsing. By permission of the author, it is posted here. Be sure to visit the home page of the blog at www.printunlimited.nl

February 9, 2018

Guest blogger – Rachel Nunziata

Even if you haven’t kicked off 2018 by globetrotting to each and every A&D trade show, event and furniture fair, there is enough content circulating throughout social media to get the general consensus; homewares and décor categories are plentiful and growing. Last fall an article written by Ali Morris in CNN Style pointed out fashion labels were strategically teaming up with well-established homeware brands to leverage their labels and create new brands, becoming an instant success after launching. It also stated data from Allied Market Research projects the total expected growth for the luxury niche alone will reach $27 billion by 2020. These collaborations will no doubt continue to multiply as the market grows but truly understanding how design brands think and where new channels will emerge is crucial for the digital print community to convey the value proposition of digital print technology to the creative industry.

The rise of fabric is spurring growth in the soft signage market.

FEBRUARY 6, 2018

Soft Signage

It’s a chilly January evening in Las Vegas, 8 p.m. You’re a thousand miles from home, setting up your tradeshow booth on the floor of a convention center. Your flight got in later than expected, but with the exhibition floor opening at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, you’ve got all the time in the world to set up. You carefully reach into the heavy crate the event staff brought up earlier today and lift out one of your rigid substrates, only to realize the unthinkable has happened – all four corners of the 1/4-in. PVC board are broken, and there’s no way you can get a replacement here in time.

Disheartened, you glance across the aisle to see one of your fellow plane passengers inserting a final Silicone Edge Graphic, or SEG, into their own booth’s backdrop. The thin silicone strip on the back of the dye-sublimated fabric slips smoothly and easily into the recessed groove of the metal frame, pulling the material taut and displaying their company’s branding with an impressive vibrancy and brilliance.

In that moment you realize two things: One, if you ever bring rigid materials to another tradeshow, you’ll double – no, triple-check – that they’re packed safely; and two, you’ll never bring rigid materials to another tradeshow.

In 2015, an SGIA Journal author estimated 1 billion square meters of textiles would be printed that year, with a 30% annual growth forecast through 2019 (see “The Evolving Soft Signage Market: Part 1,” November/December ). From retailers to event organizers, corporate rebrands to pop-up shops, it’s clear that as consumer demand rises and the cost of dye-sublimation printers, inks and materials continues to drop, soft signage is making a big dent in the industry.

A SOFT SPOT FOR ANY INDUSTRY

With production facilities in Minnesota and North Carolina, Imagine! Print Solutions is a 30-year-old graphic communications company with more than 1,600 employees. It’s also the parent company of Imagine! Express, a Minneapolis-based print shop with an 80,000-sq.-ft. facility specializing in commercial printing, direct mail and high quality fabric prints.

“Soft signage isn’t the largest portion of our product mix,” said Keri Sanders, director of customer experience, “but it’s definitely our fasting growing segment.” The shop’s EFI VUTEk FabriVU 340 and EFI Reggiani PRO 340 produce a wide mix of content for tradeshow graphics, corporate décor, museums and the hot trend taking over the retail world: 24- to 48-hour pop-up shops, restaurants and event spaces.

Gone are the days of a single rigid backdrop for exhibitions and tradeshows, Sanders said. “We’re seeing more and more requests for creative booth builds, featuring one-of-a-kind structures.” With the popularity of silicone-edge graphics frames and other tension systems, clients are looking for new and interesting ways to set themselves apart on crowded show floors, an area where fabric – with its ability to create easy-to-install, eye-catching spaces – is a perfect fit. “We once used fabric to build an indoor barn for an equine nutrition-related client,” Sanders said. “No one had seen that before.”

Corporations and museums are also putting fabrics to use, whether to delineate space from one department to the next or to rebrand and refocus their mission and culture. With textiles, Imagine! can incorporate blockout backing to divide a room, or leave the natural fabric back as-is to allow for a more translucent effect, giving clients flexibility in the look and feel of their office space. In the tech space, Sanders said, Imagine! sees institutional companies competing with Silicon Valley tech giants, updating their offices or dressing up campuses to better recruit millennials.

The most interesting growth industry, Sanders noted, surrounds pop-up shops for retail and events. This type of “here today, gone tomorrow” setup, often featuring a variety of lifestyle graphics and product mixes, can take place in any space, from an existing store that gets rebranded to an unused warehouse that’s transformed overnight into a pop-up shop. “With fabric,” Sanders said, “everything goes up and comes down quickly. It’s almost like you were never there” – except for the lasting impressions left on those who were lucky enough to be present.

THINKING SMALLER, SOFTER

After nearly 60 years in business, BPGraphics ’ team in Phoenix is well-known for their craftsmanship, expertise and exceptional work in large-, wide- and grand-format printing. Operating from its 66,000-sq.-ft.-plus production facility, the company offers a complete line of screen and digital printing and finishing in-house, according to Nicholas Spade, director of marketing.

“Much of our work is still in OOH [out-of-home], such as building wraps, train wraps, billboards,” said Spade. “But smaller scale, soft-signage sales like fabrics, hanging banners, step-and-repeats and store windows continue to grow from one year to the next.”

Many airports, Spade continued, are replacing backlits with fabrics because they’re easier to change out and have sound-dampening properties in high-trafficked areas. Companies exhibiting at conferences and tradeshows, he added, are looking for more cost-effective, travel-friendly solutions, and seem to be moving from full booths to expandable three-wall setups that can fit in a travel bag.

One of the biggest advantages in the “shift to soft?” Shipping. “As transportation prices increase and it becomes more expensive to send giant crates with rigid signs across the country,” Spade said, “the allure of folding up an 8 x 12-ft. piece of fabric, throwing it in a small box and shipping it overnight for a fraction of the cost not only saves money, but makes rushes easier, too.”

And rush they can. On the shop’s PrinterEvolution Evo33 DS, a water-based dye-sublimation press, BPGraphics can produce up to 1,300 sq. ft. of graphics at 126-in.-wide per hour. The prints are then transferred onto a wide variety of fabrics using 400° of heat and extreme pressure from their Monti Antonio 901 Heat Calender.

The specialized equipment that creates fabric’s beautiful, bold textures and colors is more challenging to run than a traditional “ink on substrate” press. “Dye-sublimation requires an entire second step – sublimating the inks (dyes) into the fabric through a heat calender,” said Spade. During this process, you have to consider that each fabric type responds differently to the required heat and pressure, and different-size graphics require different settings. A skilled operator is as much craftsman as technician.

Other issues crop up with fabrics that don’t typically occur with rigid substrates, as BPGraphics learned when they had to create 800 Super Mario-themed bollard covers for the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for Target. For instance, how do you keep a material that’s designed to stretch from doing exactly that on a Zund or other digital flatbed cutter? “When exact cuts are required, then precise sewing, it takes time and patience from all parties involved,” Spade said. The result of that trial and error? A successful and popular campaign that garnered national attention.

A SOFT TOUCH AND A KEEN EYE

“There’s just something about fabric,” said Bill Stender, owner of SF Landmark in San Francisco. “Color has been my thing for 30 years, and dye-sublimation offers the most compelling color I’ve ever seen.” Serving Hollywood film studios and Bay-area businesses since 1982, SF Landmark offers everything from large-format digital printing and grand-format dye-sublimated fabric, to dimensional signage and major motion picture props.

With its close proximity to the Moscone Center, the largest convention and exhibition complex in San Francisco, SF Landmark sees no shortage of tradeshow business. “There are shows going on every week or weekend, all year long,” said Stender. And while rigid UV, roll-to-roll printing and dimensional signs have been lucrative in the past, fabrics and textiles have been steadily picking up steam over the last decade or so. Stender thinks he knows why: “Fabric has a particular sheen that can’t be achieved with other substrates. It’s softer, elegant, inviting. Clients love that you can get up close to it, touch it.”

On the shop’s EFI VUTEk FabriVU 340, 15-ft.-wide Klieverik heat press calendar and Matic sewing system, Stender and his team recently produced a series of near-seamless, 20-ft.-wide by 12-ft.-high backdrops for a local photographer, who Stender believes is among his most demanding clientele, as photographers “have an eye for color – it absolutely has to be right.” The result? A glowing endorsement: “The client said all he had to do was shine a light on the fabric and shoot. There weren’t any lighting issues like there usually are with rigid, digitally printed backgrounds.”

Still, if you’re thinking about getting your shop into fabric, Stender cautioned that it’s not for the faint of heart. “There’s a steep learning curve involved. It’s a whole different animal than we’re used to with digital.” The different fabric materials, he noted, all appear relatively the same in their respective ordering books; however, they all possess varying thicknesses (which affects the transfer process), white points, stretch factors, weaves and more. “These are things you don’t really have to worry about with digital printing on rigid substrates.”

In the end though, Stender insisted, “There’s nothing in digital printing that compares to the stunning color and rich quality you can achieve with fabrics.”

PLEASE READ MOE ARTICLES LIKE THIS AT https://www.signsofthetimes.com/