Digital print onto Lightbox

[Chris Wool]

hi

there is special stuff but i have used to good effect normal print white vinyl
as long as it goes on to opel white – laminate if they are going to wash it lots

a idea for now

chris

[John Simpson]

I always use cast vinyl for this job as it is so thin it lets the light through, but don’t forget to warn the customer that there will be a problem when he / she wants change the prices!
You end up printing a list of new prices to go over the first print.
Other probs occur if there is a spelling mistake, especially if some of the words are foreign to us. The customer usually gives you their printed menu to go by but i have come across lots of mistakes in there as well. So the best way out of this is make sure you have done your best then ask customer to sign the proof to take the owness off you for any mistakes. Even then they find mistakes after it is put up on the wall.

Also try to charge as much as you can get away with as there are lots of problems with these types of jobs, eg: the time it takes to copy out onto the computer, get it passed by the customer which sometimes means redesigning it many times until they are happy.
I personally try to ovoid printing the whole menu for the light box by doing the prices as vinyl lettering, cheaper & quicker to replace later as they expect this done for free.
You will find they want the whole menu & more on their lightbox but expect a large area for the photo’s. then you have to explain how small the text will be if they have all these pics as well.

L J

[Paul Goodwin]

Thanks Guys 🙂

How about a bit of bothe the pics and menu printed but the prices in cut vinyl?

[John Simpson]

that’s what i said 😮

[Chris Wool]

and if you laminate it you can change prices with out damaging the print

chris

[Shane Drew]

quote Mort:

Hi all

can anyone advise me on what is the best way to put a digital print onto a lightbox?

The customer wants a menu lightbox with pictures of their food.

Any help/advise would be greatly apreciated as always

don’t forget to increase the ink usage in your rip. printing normally on translucent will look washed out with the light on.

[RobGF]

Depending on your machine, you could consider printing to a thin styrene that doesn’t have any blockers in it. You might be surprised with the results. Of course I understand if that’s not an option depending on your setup.

Rob

[Peter Shaw]

Grafityp do a translucent digital vinyl. I’ve had excellent results with this on my Cadet.

Peter

[Simon Clayton]

Mort the way we used to do it was, Buy a druatran (its like a negative of a photo, looks nearly black until lit) get one piece of 2mm clear and one of 2mm opal acrylic, sandwich the print between, sellotape all round the edge (as duratans are not water proof, any type of water based cleaner will remove the image) and slide into the box, duratrans are about £40 each for a standard size menu box around 550mm X 550mm if memory serves.. They will last forever..

Simon

[TonyM]

Best solution is to print onto a thin semi opaque material such as White Film. Most suppliers will have something in their range.

This allows good light throughput and good saturation. Vinyls tend to show the “weaving” type of structure, even backlit vinyls which are intended for outdoor applications on big lightboxes.

Once you’ve printed onto the White Film mount it onto the inside surface of the perspex or whatever material you use to front the box, with an optically clear mount film.

There are two types of mountfilm.

permanent /permanent. does exactly what it says on the tin.

permanent/peelable. Mount your graphic on the permanent side so that if your customer wants to change the display regularly, it will just peel off the perspex and be replaced by the new one without leaving residue for up to 2 months.

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote Simon C:

Buy a druatran

simon…i have never heard of that product before…done a google but got nothing..do you have any info available? 😛

thanks 😉

nik

[Simon Clayton]

Hi Nik,
Have a look at this link, page 11 http://www.c3londoncity.com/pdf/littleredbook.pdf or http://www.accessdisplays.co.uk/light-box-graphics.htm

I’m sure Dan Displays do them, but it’s been a long time since I’ve used them.. so don’t have any other suppliers details, i could look into it more if you are interested..

Simon

[Nicola McIntosh]

thanks simon for the info 😛

looks a great idea and i take it cost effective? no time wasting which you might have with other methods when changing info, used for lightboxes 😀 great thanks again simon i have learnt another new thing today 😉

nik

[TonyM]

Duratrans is a Kodak product. It is used for large format photogprahic transparencies. I assume that you are now looking for a similar product for use in ink jet printing. If so perhaps if you dont want to try my method you could find some printable pos film like they use in silk screening.

[DARREN]

As Peter said, Grafityp do a good translucent vinyl, Hexis do a good translucent vinyl and also a great backlit film, I think Uniform sell the same backlit film as Hexis, just more expensive.

Please remenber to up the level of ink you put down and print your image slower so the media has more time over heaters, otherwise the image will look good until you backlight it when the colours will look faded. I made that mistake a while ago and it’s gutting.

[Kev Mayger]

You can also use Lambda prints in lightboxes. More expensive but about the best you can get.

KM

[Paul Goodwin]

Hi all

thanks for all the replys and info 🙂

need to realy sit down now and go through it all.

i have had some advise of of someone and they say the Cadet isn’t realy suitable for doing this,

The question is can i get a good result or not on the cadet with teh materials mentioned.

As i have said i realy need to sit down and read all this now. as the answer is probably there.

[Shane Drew]

quote Mort:

Hi all

thanks for all the replys and info 🙂

need to realy sit down now and go through it all.

i have had some advise of of someone and they say the Cadet isn’t realy suitable for doing this,

The question is can i get a good result or not on the cadet with teh materials mentioned.

As i have said i realy need to sit down and read all this now. as the answer is probably there.

Don’t know why it wouldn’t mort. Even if you have to laminate, it would still work. Oracal have a good quality Translucent material, I’d give them a call and see if you can get a sample. May be worth a call.

Cheers
Shane

[Paul Goodwin]

Hi Shane i did try my local branch and they didn’t have any.

I’ll try them again in teh morning