Maximizing Possibilities With Flatbed Printing

While the flatbed printer at University of North Carolina Wilmington Printing Services has opened numerous opportunities, its arrival brought unexpected challenges.

To prepare for its delivery, says Steve Barrett, production manager, he and his five-person team moved other equipment around and taped off space on the production floor. He expected the machine, a Mimaki JFX200-2513, which features a 4x8ˈ print bed, to be delivered in pieces. Instead, it came as a single unit.

“We had to tear out some of a wall to get it through,” he says. This resulted in a six-week delay and involved the use of a crane. Lessons learned, those initial challenges are way behind the in-plant.

UNCW Production Manager Steve Barrett inspects a graphic printed on his shop’s flatbed with operators Sarah Porter (center) and Heather Carter (right). | Credit: UNCW

Barrett says he noticed in-plants becoming interested in flatbed printers as early as 2019, and while his shop already had strong business in wide-format, he started considering what flatbed capabilities could contribute. One particular application — street signs — immediately came to mind. By direct printing onto coroplast instead of printing to rolled, adhesive media, then mounting that to a rigid board, the shop could reduce its production time for a single sign from two hours to a scant 20 minutes.

“From signs,” he says, “it kind of snowballed from there.”

That snowballing, Barrett adds, is a result of the shop’s experimental mindset. He and his team have been willing and able to “try many off-the-wall things.”

The range of applications produced on UNCW’s Mimaki flatbed are truly vast, ranging from the commonplace signs and name badges one would expect, to exotic applications such as historical timelines printed on a brushed aluminum substrate, to six-foot-tall Coroplast surrounds for light poles designed to recognize university donors, to employee plaques. Metal, wood, ceiling tiles, plastic — many different substrates are utilized. One current job, Barrett shares, is printing identification plaques for 400 bricks pulled from the rubble of the university’s first dorm (Gallaway Hall), which is being demolished. The bricks will be sold at the campus bookstore, allowing alumnus to purchase pieces of the building that, for them, surely holds fond memories.

UNCW’s in-plant created this Black History Timeline, which was printed on a brushed aluminum substrate. | Credit: UNCW

The in-plant has also worked cooperatively with local artists to help them bring their artistic plans to fruition and do so affordably.

“It’s been amazingly positive,” Barrett says of his shop’s move into flatbed printing. And its experience in considering and executing numerous printing applications — stretching its abilities — has led to the in-plant redefining itself as a “solutions shop” that can be called on to solve challenges “way beyond the realm of print.”

Barrett says that while obtaining a digital cutting system for his in-plant is interesting, and his shop has floor space to hold it, the costs associated with that investment are higher than the in-plant can currently handle.