The Hyatt Regency Sydney was the venue for the first in a series of Roland DG events being held up and down the east coast, to showcase the Dimense DA-640 wide-format dimensional surface printer. The versatility and opportunity of the machine dictating a customer guest list that reaches well beyond your professional print service provider and into the design, architecture, hospitality and even engineering sectors.
Having been the first to launch the new Dimense DA-640 to the Australian market at PacPrint earlier this year, Jonny Rumney (right), confirmed that Celmac has already been fielding significant interest in the product. Pictured here with Graphic Art Mart's Peter Townsend, who was also a guest at the soft launch event.
To support the new market opportunity, Gino Farina has been welcomed back into the Roland DG family as APAC Regional Sales Manager for Dimense and he is excited by a product that he describes as ‘truly unique’. Farina says: “We know all about the advent and progress of technologies like UV and Latex but the Dimense DA-640 really does offer something else.”
“It can produce full-colour dimensional prints – with embossed effects up to 2mm thick - from a one-off to large volumes, increasing the possibilities for on-demand production of textured interior surfaces, which have previously relied on ready-made artwork with more uniform designs.”
“This means that you can add texture and value to a wide range of applications like we have never seen before, resulting in new opportunities for businesses to create, grow and profit from.”
It was fitting that the venue for the showcase event was a high-end hotel, given that a leading hotel brand is already steeped in test phases with the equipment, looking at interiors, canvasses and feature walls, to push the creative boundaries of its interior designs.
Farina adds: “The Dimense DA-640 is very versatile and can be used to print on a lot of different substrates – even concrete! – but where we have already seen a lot of interest is in its use to print wall coverings and related products leading us into conversations with a whole gamut of different market sectors.”
“It’s exciting for Roland DG and the team as we have been able to take this product to the next level in terms of its ease of use, versatility, compact design and expanded technical capability, yet still bring the price of the machine down to point where it is now extremely competitive against those other technologies like UV and Latex. Those machines purport to being able to achieve the same result, but they can rarely do that in one pass, especially the higher the thickness of the media you are working with gets. To print a textured or 3D embossed or raised effect that might be up to 2mm thick in areas, the Dimense DA-640 can still print at around 10 metres per hour, whereas those other technologies will drop significantly in print speed.”
Technically speaking
Roland DG Product & Marketing Manager, Greg Stone, showed off his own creative flair when demonstrating another angle to the Dimense DA-640 versatility, adding bronze paint flashes to a raised blank canvas printed on the DimenseDimense printing technology uses a special transparent structural ink printed alongside standard CMYK inks that act as a barrier to prevent the expansion of a foamable layer in designated areas. This allows designers to create intricate embossed patterns that complement or contrast with the printed image, thereby proliferating creative possibilities.
The specialist Dimense media consists of two layers: a non-woven back layer and a patented PVC-free phthalate-free Ecodeco top layer. Depending on the temperature this top layer is exposed to in the printer, it foams and expands by between 1-1.5mm. The hotter the temperature, the more the foam expands. Varying the temperature results in peaks and troughs in the print…embossing. The transparent structural ink is applied to areas of the media where the design requires it to stay flat, allowing for the manipulation of the structure and facilitating control over the thickness of the media.
Dimense media is available in a wide range, including matte, suede, silver, gold and pearl. Its media has high scratch resistance and is suitable for commercial wallpaper applications, tension fabric and roll-up banners for indoor signs and displays.
Each media type uses a PVC-free and plasticisers-free base for the Ecodeco traditional hot-embossed wallpaper production, making it eco-friendly, odour and migration-free and free from leeching, making \the system and process a very environmentally friendly solution. The CMYK inks are water-based resin too, and the structural ink is butylene glycol-free, so conforms to various safety standards, including AgBB, A+, UL, and GREENGUARD Gold “Unrestricted” wall coverings.
The new Roland DG Connect Designer Dimense Module, makes it easy for users to create everything from simple designs to embossing layers. Plus the system has a visualiser for previewing the output effects before printing. VersaWorks 7 RIP software is also included, which is compatible with Windows and macOS. This software allows for easy management of detailed print settings and the production of high-quality output.
