Signs are more essential than ever. Restaurants need to advertise curbside pickup and drive-through options, service industries need to engage customers, and every election season brings a surge in demand. It all adds up to opportunities for sign blanks. It’s a good time to consider ways to generate more appealing signage more efficiently.
One of the best ways to do this is with direct-to-substrate printers like the MUTOH XpertJET 661UF. This UV-LED printer prints directly to a myriad of hard surface items. Although direct printing coroplast sign blanks isn’t its primary function, the XpertJET 661UF can also be used for direct to substrate sign printing. There are some advantages and disadvantages, caveats and considerations.
MUTOH XpertJET 661UF Overview
The MUTOH XpertJET 661UF is a tabletop UV-LED printer that prints on solid objects up to 5.9 inches thick. The printer uses UV-cured ink in the traditional CMYK process color gamut plus white ink and varnish. The white and varnish inks add capabilities for printing on clear and non-white substrates including plaques, wood, and colored sheet media such as acrylic.
The 19” x 23” bed size is just about perfect for yard signs and covers a wide range of other profitable applications. Like all modern MUTOH printers, the XpertJET 661UF is powered by an advanced micro-piezo print head augmented by MUTOH’s patented intelligent interweave technology. The I2 algorithm lays down ink in overlapping wave patterns that virtually eliminate banding. The result is an efficient blend of speed and quality. There is an optional rotary attachment that supports printing directly to tumblers and sport water bottles.
This printer is ideal for rigid substrates. As noted above, white and varnish support printing to clear and colored items. For the purposes of this article, we’re dealing with good old CMYK.
Direct Printing Advantages
Why should you consider direct-printing sign blanks? There are several reasons, but the main advantages are quality and efficiency. Anyone in the modern sign industry knows customers want the higher appeal of digitally printed graphics. There is a commercial market for signs with spot color vinyl, but it’s not growing.
Customers prefer digitally printed graphics because they add gradient color and photographic elements to the designer’s toolbox. They’re just more appealing and therefore, more effective. Sign makers prefer digital printing because it eliminates the chores of weeding vinyl and applying it in layers one color at a time.
Most of our customers who digitally print signs are mounting printed vinyl to sign blanks. This is a tried and true method that has its advantages, including a much lower equipment cost. Digital direct to substrate printing takes the efficiency advantage one step further. You get to skip the steps of trimming the vinyl, masking and mounting it to the substrates. Just load your substrate, print it and you’re done. So, if you have the right kind of printer, direct printing sign blanks is an attractive option. And, if you have a MUTOH 626UF, you have the right kind of printer.
The XpertJET 661UFis a slam dunk for decorating non-traditional substrates and hard surface items like tumblers, plaques, awards, cell phones, etc. But what about traditional sign industry applications like real estate signs and yard signs?
Yes, But: Direct Printing Caveats and Considerations
Yes you can use a XpertJET 661UF to direct print traditional sign blanks, including 18” x 24” aluminum and corrugated plastic. But, there are few caveats. Here are the things to consider as you size up this opportunity.
Size: The XpertJET 661UF has a 19” x 23.3” bed. Since it’s almost an inch shy of the actual width, full-bleed edge-to-edge graphics aren’t an option. This is not a huge problem. Just design your sign blanks with adequate negative space and borders. The upside of this is lower ink costs.
The Static Problem: The primary challenge for direct to substrate printing on plastic blanks is static electricity. This is especially true of stacked sheets of corrugated plastic. The static charge interferes with the dispersal of ink droplets jetted from the head and causes overspray (Fig 1). MUTOH recommends using a staticide or some other tactic to reduce or eliminate static electricity before printing.
The Static Solution: We used a two-step prep that includes isopropyl alcohol and a common staticide. Treating with staticide only doesn’t always work. But cleaning with iso first, then treating with staticide produced consistently outstanding results in our demo room. Static charges are also a function of climate and aridity, so depending on your region and the time of year, your mileage may vary.
Durability: The final caveat to direct to substrate sign printing with a VJ626UF is UV resistance. Despite the name, UV-LED ink is not the most outdoor- durable option. Eco-solvent ink is much more UV resistant. UV ink on coroplast should only be considered for short-term signage.
Election signs and promotional signs are the ideal application. If your product needs to be out in the weather for more than 6 months, you should defer to an eco-solvent roll-to roll printer and stick with mounting your signs to substrates (pardon the pun).
Time & Money
Speaking of investments, let’s look at the business case for direct printing yard signs. How efficient and cost-effective is it compared to roll-to-roll printing? The XpertJET 661UF is engineered for decorating items that will be viewed at arm’s length. Because of this, the bundled ICC profiles in the MUTOH Edition Flexi Sign & Print RIP are tilted toward quality over speed.
The out-of-the-box print modes aren’t necessarily the most efficient way to crank out yard signs. If this is going to be a large focus of your day-to-day operation, you may want to create a custom ICC profile. We used the existing Quality 1 and Banner 2 print modes on our test samples with excellent results.
Time: Again, since this isn’t what the machine was engineered for, the print speed isn’t blindingly fast. Timed from the beginning of throughput from the RIP to completion of the print job, a typical 18 x 24 sign takes about 15 minutes to print. More saturated graphics can take a little longer. Our Hot Iron BBQ graphic, which is pretty close to full coverage, was done in 17 minutes. Our Proposition 8 sample sign, printed at Banner 2 took just over 15 minutes per panel. So, a half day printing would produce about 16 sign blanks.
Money: In our tests, the combined cost of ink and a coroplast sign blank came to only a few dollars per sign — a small fraction of the retail price of a high-quality yard sign in most markets. Here are the time specifications for the samples made for this article.
Hot Iron BBQ Sign - slide 1 above
- Print mode: Graphics 1 720 x 1440:
- Print time: 17 minutes.
Seniors 2020 Sign - side 2 above
- Print Mode: Banner 2, 720 x 720:
- Print time, 16 minutes, 47 seconds.
Election Sign - slide 3 above
- Print mode: Banner 2, 720 x 720dpi:
- Print time, 15 minutes.
So how does direct to substrate sign printing stack up to traditional roll-to-roll printing in terms of productivity? Pretty well actually (FIG 2). To get an idea of just how productive the direct-to-print method is, we ran a comparison test using a PrismJET VJ24. We printed the Seniors 2020 image in the same size, on glossy vinyl and mounted it to a coroplast sign blank. To keep things fair, we used a comparable, high-quality print mode. The Seniors 2020 vinyl graphic was printed at 720 x 1440dpi. This isn’t the fastest mode for glossy vinyl signs, but it gives us a good head-to-head comparison of technologies.
The print speed of the VJ24 is much faster. The Seniors graphic was done printing in just under 4 minutes. But you still have to trim it, pre-mask it, then mount it to the sign blank. All of this takes about 10 – 12 minutes depending on how efficient you are. Here’s the roll-to-roll time summary.
- Print Mode: Quality 4, 720 x 1440 dpi
- Print Time; 3 minutes, 57 seconds
- Finishing Time: 12 minutes, 20 seconds (trimming, pre-masking, mounting)
- Total production time: 15 minutes, 57 seconds
There you have it. Despite the fact that 15 minutes sounds like a long time for the 626UF to direct-print a yard sign, it’s comparable to the total production time for printing and mounting vinyl. Proponents of roll-to-roll printing might be crying foul because I didn’t include the time needed to prep the sign blanks for direct printing. That’s true, but it takes less than a minute per blank and there’s plenty of time to prep the next one while one is being printed, so the impact on productivity is negligible.
These are rough estimates based on our one-person sign shop scenario. The point is, direct to substrate printing can be a great time and labor saver. Add in the simplicity of direct printing, and there is definitely a business case to be made for printing yard signs & real estate signs with a UV-LED printer.
*Production time estimates are based on tests conducted in our demo room using Flexi's print modes, PrismJET 203 glossy vinyl, EnduraMASK MHT 130 application tape, MUTOH LUH1 220ml ink cartridges, and single sheets of white coroplast sign blanks.
