Q&A For UV

A: Many people don’t know UV printing. We regard UV as being digital, but it’s been around for a while. It’s a new idea of printing especially when you need things to be quickly printed.

Basically, UV printing is inkjet printing with a special UV curable ink. The UV inks will be dried via UV Led light. What happens is you print onto the product surface and the UV light dries the ink – turning them from a liquid to a solid.

It’s not like when we print onto t-shirts or paper where the ink is absorbed in. These inks “exist” and this is also why with UV printing we can handle with textures. Does it differ from what we did past? It’s used in a lot of cases to print onto finished goods, dimensional type of items, things that have depth.

WER uv machines go from 7 inches in height ore more, and you can get options for printing size A3, A2, A1, and A0，even larger printing size. That’s one of the areas where it’s different.

We speak of UV LED too. The UV printers on the market used a type of mercury lamp. They are very effective, very high curing, they’re very high maintenance. They have a max life of about 2,000 hours of exposure.

A: Number one release your imagination.

Back in the early years, everyone who used directly to garment printers also wanted to print on something else.

This allows you to take your creativity outside of standard products. You can take finished products and beautify them.

Cell phone cases. For example. There’s a huge market for custom cases, like Huawei cellphone and Apple cellphone.

Because it’s instantly dry you don’t have a gas out period. When you would print cell phone cases before, with solvent-based solutions, you had to let those solvents gas out.

We regard Direct to Garment printing (DTG) as digital screen printing, belongs to the textile custom printing, they use different printing inks, one is UV ink, one is textile ink or DTG ink, this is digital pad printing. But it’s full-color pad UV printing so to speak. Which really changes the game when it comes to printing on rigid goods.

You can do multi-color pad UV printing, but I don’t even think you can do four colors. It’s just not practical, especially with short to moderate runs. That’s the areas where UV printing really starts to expand.

A: A lot of the stuff who thought we knew about printing – saying if it’s a black box versus a yellow box it costs more. Customers didn’t understand why. Yellow is just yellow, whereas black is a mix of colors.
When you look at it in UV you can feel those layers. That’s how we can raise letters up in signage to do textures.

A: We all know the days of ‘a screen printer,’ ‘an embroiderer,’ ‘a trophy guy’ are fading. I always use the Walmart analogy. You can go into Walmart, pick up some paper napkin, get some eggs and milk, there’s probably a McDonalds in there.

It’s one-stop shopping.

It’s just logical that we would get it all done in one place. You have customers that are coming into you for t-shirts or hats, they must have other needs in most cases,

very rarely if someone is buying shirts that they can’t add something. That’s where the opportunities are for traditional t-shirt guys.

If you go back into the sign industry 15-18 years ago, it was the people who were leading edge who had large formats. Now if you don’t have a large format eco-solvent printer, you are not in the sign industry.

More and more screen printers are now bringing in the large format technology to do signage. Back in the day, all you could do was put magnets on cars, now you can wrap a car to make it look like a shopping mall.

We’re seeing more and more companies being full-service. You’ve already done the graphics work, that’s the thread that goes through all of this. Why not take those graphics and put them out in every direction and method you can?

 

Print it everywhere

Sublimate it and put it on coffee mugs. Put it on a mouse pad. Print it on a t-shirt. Print it on a banner. Let’s give them promotional items – key pendants, pens, signage for their operations.

Everyone you’re dealing with has more to their business and graphic than just the t-shirt you’re printing. Those are the areas that are low hanging fruit.

Your existing customers are buying this somewhere. You’ve already spent the sweat equity and marketing money to build the relationship. It’s always easier for me to sell a customer for their second machine. All I’ve had to do is take care of them for that period.

You must put money and effort into new customers. This is an add-on that you can start selling immediately to your other customers.

The other side of the coin is that the word gets out and you start marketing this new product. You’re also going to find customers that need your core business: t-shirts and hats etc.

Those are the applications where it fits in. And getting out of the mindset that “I am screen printer.” You can go broad and say I’m an apparel decorator. Or you’re solutions people.

We’re here to get ideas out to people. That’s what this is about – expanding your reach to your customers and giving them the opportunity to be as creative as they can. Using their logos to grow their business by custom printing.

A: I see the most potential in, is easy to get into, and has a large scale of business is the coroplast sign market. Down here in Florida or other states They call them bandit signs.

There are lawn service companies who have signs with stakes in the ground with all their information right on the sign. The process is you take your eco-solvent and print out the sign, which must be gassed out (which is usually an overnight process). Then if you want it to have an extended outdoor life you need to laminate it. Then you must mount it on each side of the PVC foam boards.

With UV, you’re printing right onto the sign blank, it’s immediately dry, it’s immediately deliverable. Your ink costs are about the same on UV as they are on the eco-solvent per square foot. You don’t have the cost of the vinyl. You don’t have the cost of the laminate. And you don’t have the cost of labor and time.

That’s just a huge marketplace where you can step up with this piece of equipment. Whether you’re a t-shirt guy, signs, trophies and awards, anybody, and they’re immediately making money and giving the customer a quick turnaround.

I went up to one of the major large-format company’s sites to get an estimate for printing – two-sided 18×24”. It was about $1-1.5 for vinyl and ink. That sign in our estimate was $0.36 per side.

That was a savings of $3.0 just in materials. You don’t have the labor cost or the cost of lamination.

There are other opportunities as well. A lot of the stuff up there you’ll see customization.

A lot of it is hand painted/decorated and it can be easily simulated on a UV Printer.

You can print on wood or metal, which can give an antique look to items. That is another area where we’re starting to see growth, especially wood decoration.

One of the more common ones is in the ad specialty marketplace. If you have a small business and you don’t want a thousand pens printed, you can get 50 – full-color, no set-up fees.

We have one of our customers we’re working with who has a multipurpose tool of sorts that’s flat and the size of a credit card. He’s making them his business cards.

It’s replacing screen printing and traditional sign printing. I didn’t even touch on how you can do metal signs and outdoor signs as well.

A: People go by and see activity at a house, you look towards the house. We call them 50-50 signs. They’re meant to be seen 50 feet away at 50 miles an hour.

You’re able to give them full color. Big lettering with the website, the phone number, and the name of the company. Importantly for your customers in the t-shirt industry, they don’t have to learn a whole new application technique. It’s direct to substrate, the real secret to signage is application technique.

A: Anything that’s the high color, anything that you would put on t-shirts, put it on other objects, including all building indoor and outdoor signs

Our UV machines allow for variable data. Allow us to do barcoding. Allow us to do sequencing.

You can do highly customized for direction signs and warning signs, high-color work that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.

A: When we speak of rigid products, we are often thinking about goods that aren’t white. We’re thinking about things in the glass, acrylic, trophy, awards, and wood industry.

With UV printing, most UV printers have 6 color channels. You have your traditional cyan, magenta, yellow and black. You have white and a varnish or clear – which gives you a better build up for textures. The clear can be used for over-coating or highlighting.

You can also do effects. If you have a beer mug you could do a water droplet effect.

Most things you print on won’t be white, so all of this is huge. You can use the software to create the under the base.

You can also print on the back of clear objects.

A: Five years is a long time. The inks are different, they’ve matured in the last few years. They’re not as obnoxious as water-based.

With UV if it was flushed out, there’s more opportunity. The challenge with UV is, even though they’re not solvent they’re not water-based either. They don’t set up as bad as water-based ones. They’re not as obnoxious on the rubber and plastic as an eco-solvent would be. But they still have a lifetime and the print heads, dampers, cap heads, wiper blades you use are not traditional water-based.

Their print head prices are almost the same, only head cap is different. Dampers are about the same. Lines are a little bit more expensive. Capping stations are about 30-40% more expensive.

If you’re getting an inkjet machine that’s been hibernated, you’re probably going to have to replace all those things. That’s the trade-off.

Also, getting the software to drive it. If it’s still a current model, you’ll probably be able to get some follow through with that.

It really comes down to the price. If they’re giving it to you for $2,000, that’s a good gamble. You’re probably going to throw $4-5,000 at it for all the plumbing, to update the software, and buy the inks. Inks typically have a shelf life of a year.

The price for inks is anywhere from $30-50/liter.

You’re likely going to be $5,000 into the project to find out if it works.

If it doesn’t print, you have to start with the head. By the time you work yourself back, you may find it’s the motherboard. At that point, you have to make end-of-life decisions about the old machine.

A: In a lot of cases people will get into the marketplace with used printing equipment only. Because that’s all they can afford. That’s just a recipe for disaster because it means they don’t have a slush fund to fix the inevitable issues they’re going to be resident with a used printer machine.

It would be a situation of spending all your money with no insurance policy. I tell people on a regular basis, you’re better to just keep saving your pennies until you can afford something. Even if it’s a refurbished piece of equipment from a viable entity.

Then you at least have the support and training you need. Especially as this is a new marketplace. It is a completely different learning curve than any other regular printers.

A: The drawbacks would generally be associated with expectations. They’re not small UV printer machines, for the most part.

For some folks, the drawbacks might be that you have a learning curve about something that’s foreign to you. And We don’t mean printing on an object. We mean understanding adhesion.

That has been the biggest learning curve for me over the last 12 years and a half we’ve been doing this. How come it prints to this plastic, glass, wood, or this metal and not this one or that one?

It prints well to everything, the question is, does it stick? Is it scratch resistant? Is it chip resistant? Is it waterproof?

The downside is you are going to have a learning curve on the items. Which can be expensive. Yeti cups aren’t cheap. Practicing on yeti cups becomes expensive.

There is some odor associated. You’re going to be playing with things that are a little bit more toxic than you’re used to.

Not so much in the inks, but in the adhesion promoters. Some people do their treatment away from the machine, or they have to put in a ventilation system.

They’re not as versatile as some people want them to be. They are probably the most versatile machine that I’ve been around. In the sense that you can throw more stuff at me than I can print than any other type of printer process.

We think that the downside to them is that sometimes people want to take them to the extreme edges. And don’t focus on their core business.

It’s the same as with Direct to Garment. People wanted to print on canvases.

Which can be cool, but don’t buy the printer based on that. Buy the printer based on what it’s meant to do.

They’re also not cheap. They range from the low to mid 10’s up into the Five-figure range. With the average machine being mid 15’s to mid-20’s.

That’s a real investment. For some people that would be a negative – it’s a serious investment.

But we also find it’s not unusual to make $80 – 100/ hour for your output effort on the UV printer machine. On top of whatever your markup is on the item.

A: We’ve gone through more than 2000 sales of the machines, done our pie charts, etc. Our most common market, though it’s not a majority, is people who are in the ad specialty space. They’re printing logos.

Secondarily, anybody who is doing laser decoration. We’ve seen a lot of people who have been doing etching. Especially onto metal, for example, tumblers.

That’s a huge market and opportunity for custom printing by uv printer machine

It’s now color etching. You’re giving them full-color onto tumblers and water bottles.

Our third largest segment is companies that are manufacturers. They’re producing a product that they want to do mass customization on.

For example, the company that does the tire covers. We have a company that does components for Harleys. A company that does maple syrup bottles.

A lot of companies are putting their safety warnings inside via UV because it’s not a label you can peel off. That’s an interesting niche. It’s an opportunity for folks who are doing apparel for these manufacturing companies, who are looking for ways to customize certain components.

You can come in an offer customization for WER UV printer, probably affordable printer price will surprise you

You think about electrical companies and the plates that have all of the switches for your breakers. You take that sheet out and permanently print onto it.

Someone from the military come to us. They’re doing assault vehicles and they’re printing stuff onto the outside on the vehicles.

We’re starting to see more in-house customization, which is cool because what that does is if the big boys are doing that in-house, the smaller players are now going to be scrambling to try and find out how they can hang with them, customization-wise.

They can’t afford the expenses of a UV printer machine (high-level), but they can come to you with 12 or 24 pieces a month and have you do embellishment for them as well.

A:  We think the changes in the technology, more and more are going to be in the ink side. There’s not a ton of stuff we’re seeing right now in the hardware.

It’s just like when you look at the large format for the sign industry. There haven’t been any radical changes. It might be a little bit faster.

However, We think we’re going to see some changes in the ink technology. Probably one of the biggest challenges we face is the trade-off between rigid printing and flexible printing.

If you have something that flexes a lot, think of binders or leather goods, there is a trade-off between flexibility and rigid printing. Most of the items that people want printed on are rigid.

However, there are applications where you need flexibility. It’s different ink sets.

We know several of the ink companies we’re interfacing with are trying to work on this hybrid solution. One that is flexible yet performs well on some of the more difficult types of plastics.

Whereas now if you use flexible you’re going to have marginal performance.

When you use flexible it tends to almost have a slimy feel for 12-24 hours as it finishes drying out.

We think that the next major step we’re going to see in the market is chemistry. The good news is that the chemistry is going to be plug and play. It’s not going to change the hardware.

We’re working on some things that will help us in the non-flat technology. What we mean by that are the rotary things.

That’s a huge growth market we think you’re going to see over the next few years. More and better solutions for cylindrical or conical shaped items. To give you better performance.

If you go back five years ago, you had Yeti and a couple of wannabes. Now, in the room we’re in, we’re looking at 5-6 manufacturers of tumblers.

We’re seeing sexier contours which are more challenging for being able to do embellishment. We’re going to see more and better processes for handling these types of items.

A: It’s true at some level. It’s going to create more maintenance. If you’re doing reflective items or glass, you just need to do cleaning at about double the rate of a normal machine.

When you’re printing on stainless you just must be smart. The lights should be angled slightly outward and not reflected toward the head. That should help to some degree.

It’s not going to be so much of an issue on items that are completely flat, as opposed to items that have some curvature.

You will see the folks that are doing items with some level of reflectiveness – whether it’s metallic or glass – do just have to be more diligent.

If you’re doing your maintenance at the end of each day, it’s not necessarily going to decrees the life of your print head or the machine. It’s just going to increase your time cleaning.

A: Our home website is wer-china.com, just click on the products link, you can leave the questions you want to know by online chat window, we will get back to you in real-time. Thank you!

If they want to reach us directly, they can email us: info@wer-china.com, Cell phone number and Whatsapp is +8613918696925. 

 

Welcome!!!