Retail
Printing direct to wood and aluminium for Wuxly
Wood and aluminium graphics for Wuxly, printed direct to substrate. Printing onto real materials rather than mounting a print to them is a different discipline: the surface is not designed for ink, and everything from grain to reflectivity has to be accounted for before the carriage moves.
What the job demanded
Wood and aluminium are at opposite ends of the substrate problem. Wood is porous, variable and alive to humidity; absorbency changes between grain and knot, sheets are rarely perfectly flat, and the natural colour underneath will tint every ink laid over it. Aluminium is the reverse: hard, non-porous and reflective, offering an ink film very little to key into, and mill finishes often carry a residue that has to come off before anything will adhere. Both need to be held dead flat and measured accurately for thickness, because a flatbed head passes within millimetres of the surface and a warped or mis-measured sheet means a strike. If the panels are pre-cut to shape, the print also has to register to an existing outline rather than the other way around.
How it was produced
Both materials were printed direct to substrate on a UV flatbed. The sheet is held down by vacuum, the print carriage travels over it, and ultraviolet diodes cure the ink at the moment it is deposited, so it hardens on the surface instead of soaking in or spreading. Because the ink is laid straight onto the material, there is no vinyl layer and no laminate between the eye and the substrate, and the wood grain stays visible through the image wherever that is wanted. Where opacity was needed, a white underbase was printed first and the colour laid over it in the same pass sequence. Adhesion on aluminium was addressed at the preparation stage by cleaning and de-greasing the sheets, and print position was registered to the cut panels rather than assumed from sheet edges.
