It's been another busy month here at Print Expression.
Whilst we were involved in a few smaller shows, our main focus this month was GovTech 2019. This was the first fabric based show we ever did back in 2017. It was this show and the clients specification that the show be 90% fabric graphics that gave us the little nudge we needed to purchase our own sublimation plant and we haven't looked back. It seems apt then that this show was going to be the one to push us to move on to bigger and better things.
Our client Expo Solutions told us that they would like us to design and produce four 12m x 7m fabric walls in one piece. A task that on the face of it seems simple enough. When you start to look at the technical aspects of this however, it is not so simple. When producing fabric using a dye sublimation process, it is very hard to get the prints to come out the same size. As it is a heat process you end up with both stretch and shrinkage on the fabric. We did some tests and decided we could do it, but it meant using a very methodical step by step process on every print so that every piece of fabric was produced in exactly the same conditions.
Each wall took approximately 5hrs to print, 1.5hrs to press onto fabric and 2 hours to sew including the joining seams. Then there was an additional 2 hours or so for measuring at various stages. This means each wall took nearly eleven hours to produce. This would equate to approximately 20 man hours.
All this hard work was well worth it when we got to flight the final products. Everything worked out as planned and we were ecstatic with the results and so was the client.
Having successfully produced these walls now makes us 1 of possibly 3 companies in the country that are capable of producing graphics of this size with such precision and accuracy. We are very proud of this achievement.
Aside from these walls we produced 762sqm of fabric and 427sqm of vinly printing for GovTech 2019.
We look forward to the next one where we will hopefully be requested to push the boundaries even further.
Please take a look at some of the images and the video below.