Wizard's Latest ideal of printing on demand mats

[cwphoto]

Hi folks:

I'm sure like me, a lot of you have gotten a questionnaire from Wizard in the last couple of days. From the questions, it's not to hard to figure out what they are working on developing. I know I've been printing for the past 20 years, and before getting into framing I often toyed with the idea of just printing out mat board colors on demand. There would be some obvious advantages. Basically just stock one board, and then print any of 16.7 million colors as needed. Add some whistles and bells to a software program, and you could have it pick out colors from the artwork, create patterns, do various designs, etc. I would think they would just have the program ink only the areas that show to economize on ink usage, etc. Interface with mat designer, and you've got an on demand printer system capable of generating a huge number of colors without a huge inventory of mat board.

For somebody like me in Alaska who spends a small fortune on shipping for smaller orders just to get 25 mat boards, such a system has appeal, but I can also see where a system like this would be impractical for a larger shop as the time to print every single mat board would simply take too much time. I can also say that printing out a solid tone color can be difficult to get even, and generally there is a certain degree of drying time involved before you can handle the board, etc.

I mostly just curious as to what people think about this on-demand style of printing mat boards. Do you think it has potential or is it going to fall flat on its face before it gets started?

Troy

 

[Kyle Henson]

I saw the demo of their new mat printing thing at the WCAF. Although interesting, not something that I would early adopt.

 

[Rick Granick]

It seems like a very inefficient way to end up with a solid color. As you say, it is hard to maintain a consistency in a solid field of color anyway.
However, the idea of being able to create a custom graphic background for use in a framing project (such as some of Dave W's football gridirons or Theng Khoo's designs, etc.) would have appeal to me.
Rick

 

[lisamarie_b]

I love the idea for custom printing. If I add that to my Path Trace designs.....hooooooooey!!!!

 

[stcstc]

its really easy to print on board with a epson wide format, well 4ply anyway

i do it all the time.

the trick is how to manage registration.

the best way i have found is print on oversized board, and then trim to size before sticking in my gunnar for cutting

 

[cwphoto]

its really easy to print on board with a epson wide format, well 4ply anyway

i do it all the time.

the trick is how to manage registration.

the best way i have found is print on oversized board, and then trim to size before sticking in my gunnar for cutting

Good point about registration, and definitely an obstacle Wizard would have to overcome. I would think another key to using such a program for pen or pattern border designs is the ability to show or pre-visualize the effects. I know I rarely use my debossing, as it's simply too hard to show customers various designs. I have about a half dozen pre-made samples, and I can occasionally get somebody interested this way.

Great comments folks! Keep em coming!

Troy

 

[cjmst3k]

I have often wondered if a Wizard would print one day, and if so, if it would do french lines or other decorations that are currently done by hand.

 

[stcstc]

generally registration for cmcs is not really there. most of them dont have very sophisticated registration

as most of them work from single ref point (bottom left) and know where that is basically


there are some that can do something more sophisticated, using a camera and vacuum bed to read reference points etc

but those machines are much higher end, generally out of the price range of most bespoke framers

 

[FramerDave]

Printed lines, panels and other similar details? Sure, why not? Printing a full sheet of matboard to get a custom color? Not with ink running roughly $3500 per gallon.

 

[FrameMakers]

Wizard tried this over 10 years ago and it was a horrible expensive failure. Registration was one of the main issues, but so was getting a proper calibration. You also had issues if you got a head clog half way through printing a large mat, you were out quite a bit of ink and matboard. Thanks, but I will stick with printing on a mat paper and mounting it when the need arises.

 

[Rick Granick]

Printed lines, panels and other similar details? Sure, why not? Printing a full sheet of matboard to get a custom color? Not with ink running roughly $3500 per gallon.

That's my feeling too. Another potential use I can see is, for example, printing captions, logs, etc. on mats before cutting; for framing school class photo layouts with the name of the student printed below each opening, etc.
Rick

 

[stcstc]

another useful thing would being able to print on back of nested mats, so if your running a big mixed cutting list can be useful to have mat numbers or order number on etc

 

[Jim Miller]

Wizard tried this over 10 years ago and it was a horrible expensive failure.

As I recall, that was the DaVinci printer. It seemed like a good idea, and I almost bought one with the idea of buying all white matboards and printing any color or pattern or decorative feature that I wanted. Three factors stopped me cold:

1. The cost of printing every mat was much higher than buying the factory-colored boards, even with a hefty savings in board cost due to buying a pallet of only one white matboard part number. The cost of ink plus the labor to run the printer made it unacceptably expensive.

2. As Dave noted, the printing process itself was imperfect. Colors were inconsistent and printing over a large area showed streaks, blobs, and other flaws.

3. Since the colors printed were not pigment-based, the mats would not qualify for preservation framing, so I woulod still have to buy at least some Conservation-grade mats, same as before.

 

[Lance E]

A timely discussion! Certainly for me print on-demand will become more important as our market has few vendors left and they are holding less and less stock (justifiably so too imho). It is already cheaper to print board here, despite the huge cost of ink you need only print the area of board you need, this leaves white waste suitable for printing again and reducing overall waste. It is a "greener" option for various reasons, there is much more competition in board supply which drives down the prices, also less stock holding becomes far more cost effective and less space for stock would be another cost saving. I believe that combined with good laminate finishing options this service has every chance of now ebbing it's way in, DaVinci was perhaps too soon...

 

[cwphoto]

As I recall, that was the DaVinci printer. It seemed like a good idea, and I almost bought one with the idea of buying all white matboards and printing any color or pattern or decorative feature that I wanted. Three factors stopped me cold:

1. The cost of printing every mat was much higher than buying the factory-colored boards, even with a hefty savings in board cost due to buying a pallet of only one white matboard part number. The cost of ink plus the labor to run the printer made it unacceptably expensive.

2. As Dave noted, the printing process itself was imperfect. Colors were inconsistent and printing over a large area showed streaks, blobs, and other flaws.

3. Since the colors printed were not pigment-based, the mats would not qualify for preservation framing, so I woulod still have to buy at least some Conservation-grade mats, same as before.

Since I do a lot of printing, I can chime in on this last part. The printers of today are definitely not the printers of 10 years ago or even five years ago. My HP wide format printer for example has a redundancy system built into it so that if a particular nozzle clogs, another nozzle will fill in the blanks. It's actually possible to continue to print with quite a few of the nozzles clogged. This was not the case with printers of the past.

I think Epson was the first one to create much greater consistency between one printer to the next, so that a custom ICC profile could be used on a wide range of printers. HP has a linearization procedure, and it actually reminds you when it's time to calibrate. This ensures that ink distribution remains well..Linear. Not too heavy in the deep shadows, with nice smooth tonal transitions all the way to the highlights. In short, this keeps the printer in a known state and insures greater consistency.

I rarely have to worry about nozzle clogs or dramatic color shifts anymore. There are some inconsistencies between paper batches, but far less with ink--almost none that I notice. I can say time of year also has some effect on papers as they dry out or become more humid. Smooth, even tones are definitely one of the hardest things for a printer to do though.

I would think anyone designing a program would set things up so that only the few inches of the mat that are visible would get inked. It would be a huge waste in ink and time to do something otherwise. And while the cost of ink is something like $1800 a gallon from my calculations, The actual amount of ink usage is relatively small, maybe 7-10 mills. So, more like 40 or $.50 for a 20 x30 or so. I know that HP has a program that tells you how much ink is used, so I'm kind of going from memory here, but it's actually pretty small per print. I'm also talking about a wide format professional printer here, not some desktop model.

So, not saying that this makes everything okay, but I think there may be some residual attitudes from years ago about printers that no longer apply. I can also say that most of the inkjet printers from the major players-- Epson, Canon, and Hewlett-Packard are all pigment-based, and are very long-lasting.

Personally, I don't think such a system is going to be economical either, and I already own several wide format printers. Still, I think it does have a place, particularly when a color doesn't exist or for rush jobs, specially designs or patterns, etc. Something else not really touched on here is that the mat board would have to be specifically coated for inkjet printing for best results. The best color saturation comes from 100% cotton paper, and is far weaker on an alpha cellulose type board, but certainly doable. A 100% rag board would definitely bring the cost up--way up. For most frame shops it would also mean buying a printer, and the cost here is pretty high too, particularly if you want to do full 32x40.

I have certainly enjoyed all the comments and learned a few things too, so thanks again for everyone who took the time to comment.

Troy

 

[Lance E]

Nice post Troy, some notes/thoughts:

Bainbridge does (did?) make a board "IJ4" which was great. A pink matboard we printed and cut in 2004 was recently printed again (on stock we still had for some reason) to match for another frame, I was not able to tell the difference between the old & the new. Although our local supplier no-longer has this product there are various alternatives of sheet stock available.

The HP & Canon printers only run 800µm while the Epson runs 1500 (most "4-ply" matboard are 13-1400).


Melinex & other laminates (more capital outlay for framers ) are a simple way of altering the printed result to get away from the "flat" look a rag paper can have when printed with a solid colour.

Anyone mildly familiar with Adobe Illustrator can create matboards in minutes, stroke and symbol features make it extremely easy to create complex designs with exportable cutting info for most CMC's.

Cost or ml per print are easy to work out if you're using a RIP - that might be a stretch for Framers.