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Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in News & Trends
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A Sky High, Wire Walking Diversion in Sarasota

Nik Wallenda does a high wire walk across US 41 in SarasotaThere are a lot of great reasons to visit Sarasota, Fla., chief among them is LexJet headquarters. There are also white sand beaches with azure waters, a temperate climate, Major League spring training, museums, top-notch restaurants, and so forth.

What also makes Sarasota unique is the unexpected. No, not hurricanes, which are actually fairly rare on the southwest coastline of Florida, but the impromptu odd events that happen here and there.

Today it was high-flying (or walking) acrobat and high-wire artist Nik Wallenda, who describes himself as King of the Wire. Wallenda wowed a crowd with a skywalk across US 41, the main drag through Sarasota.

Suspended about 180 feet in the air, Wallenda made the 500-foot-long walk from the top of a crane to an adjacent building without a tether. The wind picked up more than expected, but Wallenda made it safely across to the cheers of thousands who stopped to watch.

Our man on the scene, LexJet videographer Sean McGettigan, captured the moment in the video embedded below. Sean, by the way, also creates all the handy how-to videos you can find at our YouTube site: www.youtube.com/lexjet. Thanks Sean, and enjoy Wallenda’s daredevil walk Sean captured today…

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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The Holy Grail of Banner Stands: Banners that Truly Lay Flat

 

Producing lay flat banner stand graphics

Lou Fiore, owner of Speedway Custom Photo Lab in Daytona Beach, Fla., has been kind enough to share some great ideas, which we’ve posted here at the LexJet Blog (LED Backlit Conference Room Graphics and Creating a Multi-Panel Display).

Printing banners that lay flatTo round out the trio of ideas, Fiore shares his process for making perfectly flat banners for banner stand displays, what he calls the “Holy Grail” of banner stands.

“Regardless of how lay-flat manufacturers say a certain banner material is, you usually get some curl, and it varies depending on the material,” says Fiore. “Recently, I tried LexJet TOUGHcoat Water-Resistant Polypropylene with GBC 5 Mil Octiva Low-Melt Emboss 50 Laminate. While at first glance, you wouldn’t think this is a good match since the laminate is applied at temperature, but the result is astounding, with absolutely knife-sharp flat edges.”

Fiore’s technique is to print the Water-Resistant Polypropylene on his Epson 9800, then the GBC Emboss 50 is applied using a sled at the lower end of its low-melt temperature range, around 170 degrees F. The laminate is allowed to cure for about an hour and the banners are then trimmed on a Keencut Sabre 2 General Purpose Cutter (120 in.).

Cutting and trimming banners“Initially, the edges appear to have some curl, but once the protective layer is peeled off of the Emboss 50, the banner lays absolutely flat and stays flat when it’s under the spring tension of the banner stand,” explains Fiore. “One nice characteristic of the Emboss 50 is that it’s a 5-mil vinyl, which is very flexible and not bulky. Plus, it has a very light crystal surface that doesn’t kill the pop of the print, yet it kills the reflection off of the graphic. I show this to my customers so they can see how beautiful the laminate is; that’s how much I like it.”

Thanks for the tips, Lou!

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Clearly a Good Idea: LED Backlit Conference Room Graphics that Pop

Printing backlit graphicsLEDs (light-emitting diodes) have made it a lot easier to create backlit signs. Simply put, the little diodes pack a punch.

Back in the day, and not too far back, the only viable LED color for sign lighting was red. Improvements in the technology have yielded brighter and more consistent whites, and the price has gone down significantly.

Add LEDs to a well-made thin-panel plexiglass-faced sign cabinet, hide the power source, print a vibrant image and you’ve got the perfect interior sign. Lou Fiore, owner of Speedway Custom Photo Lab in Daytona Beach, Fla., put this winning combination together for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, also based in Daytona Beach.

Backlit displays with LEDsFiore bought the panel from Tec Art Industries, Wixom, Mich. The panel has a cover sheet of plexiglass that can be removed so the graphic can be easily placed inside. The graphic is taped along the top edge and allowed to hang. Then, the cover sheet is attached with eight stainless steel standoffs.

“Tec Art was extremely helpful with the specifications and manufacture of the panel. It arrived here in a huge crate and worked right out of the box,” explains Fiore. “I printed the graphic on LexJet Premium Solvent Backlit Gloss on my Epson GS6000 64″ low-solvent printer. The LexJet backlit material prints a nicely saturated image and the extra thickness of the material makes it easy to handle such a large graphic.”

Fiore adds that the customer’s electrician created a hidden panel for the power supply so that no wires are visible, providing a clean, professional look in the university’s conference room. The power supply is 12 volts and the estimated power consumption is about 80 watts.

The LED lighting is housed on the top and bottom horizontal edges. The edges are also chamfered at 45-degree angles to help provide the edge lighting effect.

“There’s no adhesive involved because they’ll change it out every few months and all we have to do is tape a new backlit graphic inside. The only thing we had to do was make the hanging cleats for it. You lift it up, it comes off the wall and you put it back up on the cleats so that it’s flush against the wall,” adds Fiore.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Clearly a Good Idea: Creating a Framed, Multi-Panel Display

Printing transportable displays

Lou Fiore, owner of Speedway Custom Photo Lab in Daytona Beach, Fla., came up with a unique way to create a six-panel display that Volusia County could take with them and hang up for presentations and trade shows.

The key to this display is in the almost-invisible means by which the panels are held together so that it’s one unit with six parts, equally spaced. Fiore used Clear Power Tabs, typically used as a substitute for banner corner grommets, to evenly space and keep the panels together as one piece.

“If you lay a Power Tab out straight, the loop in the tab is a half-inch on either side. They hang with these invisible connectors, which the customer thought was cool,” explains Fiore. “They wanted something versatile that they could take to trade shows and conferences. You can hardly see the connecting tabs, even if you’re standing in front of them. And as a bonus, because of the flexibility of the tabs, all six panels fold flat over each other to make it the size of a single panel for easy transport.”

Each panel is 3/16″ Ultra Mount foam core panel framed with plastic poster trim. The graphics were printed on Epson Premium Luster Photo Paper with an Epson 9800 and laminated with GBC 5 Mil Octiva Lo-Melt Emboss 50 Laminate.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: Photography in the Twilight Zone

Michael Zerivitz, DDS is a Deltona, Fla.-based dentist who’s had a lifelong fascination with photography. Though his photography is a sideline to his successful practice, Zerivitz has been practicing photography since high school.

Award winning photographyThat continual practice, plus the help of his professional photographer friends in the Orlando area, helped make Dr. Zerivitz a distinguished award-winning photographer.

“I set photography aside after college while I raised a family and started a practice. Then I went to back to school at Daytona State College, which has a great photography program, and started getting together with mentors in the Orlando area,” says Zerivitz. “I have some really good professional photographer friends who have a group called the Portrait Artists Group and I was fortunate enough to be invited to join them. I have to give credit to my friends and mentors in the Orlando area who have helped me become a better photographer.”

Zerivitz was recently honored with a Distinguished Award in the Architecture category and a LexJet Sunset Award at the recent Florida Professional Photographers convention for his work entitled Twilight Zone.

Zerivitz captured the image while touring the Israeli Supreme Court building. A certain passageway with windows lining the corridor leading to an interior courtyard caught his fancy so he stopped and took a frame. Later, the image caught his eye again.

Though it’s not the type of shot he usually takes or enters in competition, he did some minor adjustments to it in Photoshop and Nik Software to make it more high key and had the image printed by photographer Tim Kelly.

“We mounted it and matted the print, and then hand-cut the deckling along the edges. There was a little exit sign that was visible in the corner we took out, but other than that it’s a straight shot,” says Zerivitz. “I call it the Twilight Zone because it reminds me of the opening of the old TV show. I think the judges liked the monochromatic image with tones that are all in similar ranges.”

Despite his busy schedule fixing and fine-tuning teeth, Zerivitz is pursuing Certified Professional Photographer and Master Photographer degrees and had one of his images accepted into the PPA Loan Collection this year. Last year Zerivitz was among the Top 10 Florida Professional Photographers and was Photographer of the Year in his local guild.

Here are some of the stories (Prints that Win) of other LexJet Sunset Award winners:

Printing to Win with Sunset Photo Metallic and eSatin Inkjet Media

Bridging the Realism Gap

Something Old, Something New

Old West Shootout in the Southeast

Bridge over Water

Walking the Lonely Street

The Artisan’s Workbench

The Perfect Image with the Perfect Paper and Laminate

David Ziser Wins Sunset Award for Print on Sunset Photo eSatin

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in News & Trends, Technology & Products
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Book a Technology Demonstration at LexJet this Fall

LexJet will host New Technology Demonstrations throughout the fall at LexJet headquarters and Demo Center in Sarasota, Fla.

New automated canvas wrap machineThe Technology Demonstrations will feature a sneak peek at the easyFrame, a semi-automatic canvas wrap machine that produces up to 45 finished canvas wraps per hour, plus the latest inkjet hardware, media and finishing technology on the market.

The easyFrame will be available for demonstrations through Oct. 1, but you’re welcome to visit us any time after that as well to see all the new printers, inkjet media and finishing equipment at LexJet’s Demo Center and headquarters office.

Contact a LexJet customer specialist to set up a personalized New Technology Demonstration at 800-453-9538.

Your customer specialist will also create a custom itinerary with more specific times to better fit your schedule, plus directions, things to do in Sarasota (one of the best beaches in the world at Siesta Key) and whatever else you may need to make the most of your trip.

For a video preview of the easyFrame, check out the video embedded below: