Printing brand-matched colours becomes a reality for Lasercut.London with a Roland UV printer

Lasercut.London Ltd. is a specialist in its field, having evolved from a laser-cutting business to a problem-solving consultancy for high-end brands, offering design and manufacture of awards, furniture, automotive products and more. As such, it seeks out cutting-edge equipment to meet the specific requirements of its clients – but discovered its  Roland new compact UV printer, the RolandVersaUV LEF-12i offered far more than the one function for which it was installed.

A brand-matched colour solution

"We design bespoke, high-end products, offering the highest quality in London and also work with multiple clients in USA,” explains Chris McGee, Managing Director of Lasercut.London. “We offer a fast-turnaround service for quality-focused customers; work is completed typically in three to five days and sometimes overnight.”

“More of our clients are requesting brand-matched colours which are not feasible on short runs with acrylic sheet, as we would need to order costly minimums of the material, with three-month lead times. Additionally, last year we saw a very popular trend for colour-gradient logos on awards which, again, are not possible with off-the-shelf acrylic sheet. The answer to meeting these requirements was a digital UV printer.”

"They were the only people we really looked at; I've always respected Roland's status within the print industry" 

The company went directly to Roland for a suitable printer and chose the Roland VersaUV LEF-12i printer for its high-quality output and build, designed for a clean workplace. 

It was the only machine in its class that was fully enclosed; we like things to be as clean as possible in our studio environment,” comments Chris McGee.

He continues: “We bought the machine for one specific application, like many of our devices. But once it was installed and I started playing around with what it can do, I discovered many more of its functions. I love the white ink and the surface textures possible with printing layers of gloss UV ink. It brings 3D effects into traditional print.”

An ideal printer for personalisation

Lasercut.London's Instagram account showcases some of its experiments – including printing onto a pancake on Shrove Tuesday! 

The most compact of the LEF series, the Roland VersaUV LEF-12i prints directly onto a huge variety of materials and objects, making it an ideal printer for personalisation, prototype designs and one-offs. Printing a bottom layer of white ink makes colours on top really pop, while the gloss ink option enables spot gloss or matt finishes and touchable embossed effects.

“While it is fun, the LEF-12i is also a technical machine and our training at the Roland Creative Centre was really worthwhile,” says Lasercut.London's MD. “I would definitely recommend other users go on a course. The experts there steer you much quicker to what the machine can do for you than YouTube videos or the manual can. In fact, the whole experience with Roland is really great, right from the beginning.”

Chris says that he is considering upgrading the LEF12i to one of its larger UV printers which offer bidirectional printing for faster speeds.

As an experimental and driven Roland user, Lasercut.London could be a Roland Hero for 2018.

For more information on Lasercut.London, please visit www.lasercut.london