swissQprint Relief & Textured Printing
swissQprint UV inkjet printers are capable of impressive relief and textured printing, offering a range of capabilities that cater to the demands of various industries. These printers are recognized for their proficiency in creating layered relief prints, which open up a realm of possibilities for signage, decor, wood printing, and more.
This technique imparts a tactile and visual depth to the printed materials, adding textural elements that enhance the overall appearance and quality of the output. Whether you are looking to create intricate patterns, simulate natural surfaces, or add a tactile dimension to your designs, these printers provide the tools necessary to achieve these effects. They excel in replicating relief and textured details from original artworks, capturing even the finest brush strokes with precision. The addition of varnish in select areas, with varying gloss levels, provides the finishing touch, resulting in a reproduction that closely mimics the original art.
How is it done?
Capturing the Original Artwork: The first step in creating layered relief artwork for printing is to obtain a highly detailed 3D scan of the original artwork. The Metis 3D scanner and similar devices use various technologies to capture the physical details of the artwork. These scanners record the surface geometry of the object, including its texture, shape, and depth.
The data collected by the 3D scanner is processed to generate a digital 3D model of the artwork. This model contains all the surface information, including variations in depth and texture. The resulting 3D model serves as the foundation for the relief printing process. To prepare the artwork for relief printing, the 3D model is further processed to create a relief map. This map represents the depth and texture information as grayscale or heightmap data. In this map, lighter areas correspond to shallower sections, while darker areas represent deeper or textured regions.
You can download an example PDF here
Once you have your artwork you can begin the process of processing it through your PrintFactory RIP and sending it to the printer. You can open the file in Editor to gain a better understanding of how each page in your artwork is applying a varying % of ink in each step
The example artwork available at the link and pictured above contains 7 pages, the first 6 creating the build up of layers and the final 7th page containing a flood White undercoat followed by the full color final layer. This is a typical relief print artwork, usually with multiple pages where the final page will contain the White undercoat and the final color layer.
Open the artwork into PrintFactory Layout & submit one page at a time to the printer so that the printer receives 7 different jobs, be sure to select the correct layering method in the job driver settings. If the build up layers contain white/varnish ink as well as color, be sure to turn on the inline special inks by checking them on in the top layer:
For the final page (in the above example, it is page 7) be sure to activate the White layer as it's own layer, as this will contain a flood White. Make sure that if the White spot color is not named "White" that you also use the special ink mapping component in Layout:
After you have repeated the job submission process in Layout, the swissQprint DFE(Digital front End) will receive the 7 separate jobs. You then need to use the swissQprint RTLView application to merge the jobs together so that the printer controller can interpret them as a single multilayered job & move the carriage height accordingly after each layer (page) is printed.
You can open RTLView by right clicking on any job in the DFE and selecting "Open RTLView", alternatively you can open it from the Desktop or Start menu if the required shortcuts are created. Once the application is opened you need to go to the File Menu -> Merge Files to Layer. The following dialogue box will open:
You can open RTLView by right clicking on any job in the DFE and selecting "Open RTLView", alternatively you can open it from the Desktop or Start menu if the required shortcuts are created. Once the application is opened you need to go to the File Menu -> Merge Files to Layer. The following dialogue box will open:
You now need to use the + icon to add the 7 separate RTL files that you sent to the swissQprint from PrintFactory Layout and order them correctly so that the 7th (or last) page is printed as the last layer:
Click OK and then you will be prompted to save the merged file as a new RTL file that the Amber or Lory front end will pick up and register as a new merged job containing the layers from the 7 pages you sent:
It is user discretion but advised to also increase the Quality (and thus the pass rate) of each layer, this increases the amount of ink used in each layer which can benefit the process:
After these steps are completed you can go ahead and print the job, the printer will print each layer one after the other whilst moving the carriage height upwards to account for the height of the print. The final result is a textured relief print mimicking the original 3D scanned artwork:
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