CMYUK, Shrewsbury: Poole-based Quadrant2Design has ordered a second EFI Pro 16h UV LED hybrid printer from CMYUK. To be installed in July, this second model arrives six years after the first, and like its original counterpart, will be used solely for printing exhibition floors.

Now in its 25th year of trading, Quadrant2Design is a dedicated exhibition contractor that works directly with end-users. Its mission is simple: to enable customers to reconfigure and re-use their exhibition stands in different spaces, at different events, time and time again. Customers that buy more than one stand a year are able to store graphics for free at the company’s dedicated storage facility that currently holds over 1000 drums of customer artwork that can be reused and repurposed for future events.

Since 2014, Quadrant2Design has been the sole distributor for the modular Prestige Events System in the UK and uses it exclusively. Stands involve total graphic coverage, which the business terms the ‘100% Graphic Look’, further enhanced by photo-floors that extend graphics into this traditionally overlooked area.

“We’ve invested in a second EFI Pro 16h to increase capacity and build in a level of redundancy. If there’s a mechanical issue, which is a rare occurrence, we can continue production because we work in an industry that has very short turnaround times, big peaks in demand, and we cannot fail on a deadline. If the floor isn’t down on the morning of a show’s build day, there’s not going to be a stand,” says Ross Pike, Operations Director.

“Everything is done in-house, nothing is subcontracted out from the design, printing, finishing, installation, project management, and logistics. The new Pro 16h will help us maintain this,” says James Vicefield, Marketing Manager.

Just look down
Quadrant2Design is unique in that its printed floors are an integral element to its stand build services. “We’ve printed some amazing floors with really fun concepts. One of our customers supplies fish food and we designed their floor to look like a Koi Carp pond with pathways round it. With another client that produces surface finishes for outdoor uses, we printed different tiles, paving, and block work on the floor, which looked very realistic,” says Ross.

“There are also more practical things that customers are doing with their floors,” says James. “One of our clients has QR codes printed on it so visitors to the stand can enter competitions. Printed floors also help with threshold issues – getting visitors onto stands through the utilisation of clever graphic tricks enticing them to take that vital step,” says James.

For its floor work, the business prints direct to 2mm expanded foam PVC product rather than carpet to ensure a sharp photographic finish. The EFI Pro 16h is the perfect UV LED printer for the job. An industrial 1.6m wide, hybrid printer, it handles the heavy flooring rolls with ease. The material utilises the printer’s hybrid flatbed which, with its powerful vacuum holds the material in place during printing to ensure accurate output.

“Using a roll-to-roll process wouldn’t work using this type of floor material due to the inherent density inconsistencies in the expanded foam. The Pinch rollers would create a stretch in the material, so any continuous graphics running across the 1m wide drops we produce wouldn’t line up, creating anomalies in logos and print patterns,” notes Ross.

The EFI Pro 16h
The EFI Pro16h has a resolution of up to 1200 dpi and offers four colours with white as standard. This can be imaged like any other colour or used for multi-layer printing for greater profit opportunity. True four-level, variable-drop greyscale print capability allows for the reproduction of near-photographic images, saturated colours plus smooth gradients.

“The reliability, consistency, no-nonsense production, and the size of the printer is what really works for us. The routine maintenance is straight forward and keeps the printer running without issue. It’s a true workhorse and delivers what we expect.

“There are not many 1.6m wide hybrid printers in the market that have such a compact footprint, and as we know the Pro 16h was designed to go through a standard sized door. Despite having a large facility, space is incredibly valuable to us because we allocate a significant portion of it to prebuilding our stands. We fully assemble each stand to verify the quality of the structure, ensure the correct hardware is installed, and confirm that the printing of graphics and flooring is flawless. Customers can even pre preview them in advance, therefore with two EFI Pro 16h hybrid printers, plus all our other printing and finishing equipment, space was a major consideration,” says Ross.

Quadrant2Design has built its business around 3 central tenets of the Prestige Events System: modularity, reusability, and sustainability. Focusing on these has enabled it to grow efficiently, allowing for the design and production of high volume, premium quality stands, with a fairly high degree of complexity.

Says Ross: “We’re delighted with the guidance and service that CMYUK has given us. Over the past 12 months, we have printed over 14, 000 sq. m of flooring alone. Our investment in the EFI Pro 16h printers has been a major contribution to our success, and the installation of a second model will increase capacity, increase volume output, and support further growth.”