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SCREEN Indoor and outdoor signage
Screen, an
illuminating process
With the introduction of chip-and-pin payment cards the cry of ‘sign here
please’ is something we hear far less. Conversely, physical signs providing both
instructions and information are on the rise day-by-day. We have the EU to
thank for most of the growth By Peter Kiddell
S
omewhere in Brussels is a mole with visited by a salesman representing a well molecular miracles catch, so pigments and inks
contacts in the sign and print industry known digital printing machine supplier who will develop. We often forget that the largest
who is insisting on warning labels, stated categorically that the UV curing inks users of pigments are the cosmetics and
posters and displays being produced for every used in his digital printing machine will coatings industries. So, when you about a new
conceivable human activity. These explain maintain their colour ‘for ever, far longer than exotic pigment it is likely to have evolved from
whether you can do it, can’t do it or the any other ink’. painting oil rigs or the most attractive form of
consequences of same. Be aware that many of My client told the salesman he was talking indoor and outdoor advertising: lipstick and
these will have to be specific colour matches rubbish. The point is if the salesman had sold nail varnish.
and lightfast for seven years. So where do we the equipment to an unsuspecting novice the For sign practitioners who wish to create
turn to but screen printing where the inks we salesman would have been long gone before fluorescent coloured, metallic effect and glitter,
can use are more stable that those used of the problem of UV instability became obvious. the thick film process of screen printing is
other processes. The quality of digital printing inks is increasing essential unless they buy in expensive coloured
On the issue of lightfast inks, a client was and as nano technology and other such substrate.
The hand bench screen printing machine is
still one of the most effective tools a printer
can have and they can be purchased second-
hand for next to nothing. A brand new piece of
kit will pay back in weeks. Any colour, any
substrate, any working environment, a hand
bench is suitable for printing from one to 1,000
images very simply and cheaply. They are not
practical for four colour process in all but the
expert hands but line colours and specific
colour matches are right up their street.
I had a poignant letter from a printer with
many years experience in screen printing who
was made redundant for the first time in
twenty years. He said as a hand bench screen
printer he was ‘unaware of the digital age,
believing in very lean times, screen printing
would always be economic’. He was right.
However, later on in the letter he said his
unsuccessful job search ‘highlighted that
screen printing has never publicised itself too
well’. Sadly there is a great deal of truth in that
statement.
At the other end of the scale the managing
director of a large display producer considered
he would not be able to fully service his
customers’ needs if he only had digital printing
presses. He felt the future of large format
printing will be digital but even the current
Quazar International signs grab your attention range of higher speed digital equipment that
print fifty to ninety sheets per hour were no
12 SCREEN PROCESS AND DIGITAL IMAGING l October 2009 Visit us at www.spdi-online.com
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