Page 26 - Print 21 Magazine Jan-Feb 2019
P. 26

3D Printing
Tagging the process of additive manufacturing
as 3D Printing is a public relations and marketing gift for an industry battling against perceptions it’s yesterday’s technology. However printers couldn’t discover how to make a business out of 3D printing. Then along come
Abe Weiszberger of Stick-on-Signs and
Michael Liveris of Graphic Art Mart, promoting the Israeli Massivit technique, and suddenly it’s all as clear as day. Patrick Howard spoke with them.
Breaking out of the box
Soft fabric signage is all
the rage. It’s the perfect inkjet product: bright, colourful, easy to produce and transport, relatively cheap, and good for use indoors and out. It’s the default output for the increasing number of printers who’ve moved into wide format machines. Marketers love it, customers are wrapt and it’s a rapidly growing market. Only problem is... how do you to mount it?
Aluminium frames are a pain. They’re angular, difficult to cut and assemble, and are labour and cost intensive. Nothing has inhibited the use of soft signage so much as the limitations imposed by having to fabricate aluminium frames to hang it on. Until now.
Look around you and you’ll soon see an increasing number of soft fabric signs in all kinds of fantastic shapes. Circles, cones, rainbows, you name it, there are backlit fabric signs out there in a wide variety of shapes, displaying their images and message at a whole different level. No longer confined
to the rigidities of squares and triangles, signs made of soft swirling curves are making an appearance and expanding the market opportunities for inkjet fabrics. Facilitating the transformation is large format 3D printing and in particular the leading Massivit technology.
Thinking outside
the frame
Soft fabric sign mounts may not be the headline product 3D printing is known for – think massive, high- profile, stand-alone advertising props and illuminated signs – but it’s a example of how printers can open
up new markets for their existing customers cheaply and effectively. According to Abe Weiszberger, owner of Stick-on-Signs, the Massivit agent for the region, making soft signage frames is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the opportunities for printers entering into 3D printing.
“Making a soft signage frame any size you want with 3D printing is easy and cheap. Without having to cut
and stick aluminium struts together, Massivit’s gel technology can create complex frames on which to hang
any type of soft fabric signage,” he says. “It’s about making your existing business more profitable while at the same time growing into new areas.”
The visionary Weiszberger is a two-year shareholder in the Israeli company and is enthusiastic about its potential. He lists the advantages of Massivit 3D printing over anything else in the market.
“There are over one hundred machines sold since Massivit 3D was launched at drupa 2016. It’s five to ten times faster than anything else
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