The printer we picked was the Fuji Acuity. It will print onto rigid materials up to 4 feet by 8 feet, such as foam core, Gator board, Sintra, styrene, clear and frosted acrylics, metals, glass, wood, and coroplast. Actually, almost anything up to 1.75 inches thick, think doors!
Also, the Acuity can print with white ink, which opens a whole world of design possibilities. One of our first jobs was to print large display panels onto 1/2 inch thick acrylic. The customer wanted the background to be clear with blocks of text but there were also pictures that had to look good. The old way would have been to print onto a clear photographic film for the text blocks and photographic paper for the images and then mount onto the acrylic with an optically clear adhesive. You could print the whole thing to clear film but then you would have a transparent look to the pictures or all on photo paper but then you would loose the transparency of the background. With the Acuity we printed everything directly on the acrylic and then printed white ink as a backer only where there was an image. It was beautiful.
Think about other possibilities, with white ink one can use colored substrates. Print white first and then the image on top of the white. Take it a step further and create the image with white as a variable density layer. How about starting with black foam core, Gator or Sintra and print just using white. I've seen some stunning pieces done this way.
The flat bed also presents some interesting "green" angles. First off there is a lot less waste to go in the trash. Since we are not mounting there are no adhesives or release papers being used. There is way less energy used as we don't have to mount. Since the inks are cured instantly there is no out gassing. (Inks have to have a liquid carrier and virtually all carriers have some volatile compounds so if you can cure the ink rather than letting it dry on its own you reduce the release of VOCs.)
Even better, we can turn jobs much faster and pass some of the labor savings on to our clients.
This doesn't mean the end of our 104" wide HP printer or photographic printing on the LightJet 430. There are still plenty of things these systems do better than any other method and we will continue to employ multiple processes so that we can always recommend the right process for the project. Unlike many companies that rely on one type of printing process we know that there is no such thing as a one shoe fits all method.
We look forward to having a lot of fun with the newest tool in our arsenal of great printers.
