Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “What is a UV Flatbed printer? A Quick Look at the Roland LEF-12i”.
Welcome to make workshop where we talk about tech tools and toys built for makers today we’re going to be exploring uv printing. This is the roland versa, uv lef, 12i and if you’ve never seen a uv printer before this might just blow your mind. So a uv printer is similar to the inkjet printer you’ve got at home, except because it’s using these uv cured inks it can print on nearly anything. I’M sure there’s a legal reason that they don’t say it can print on anything, but it did print on pretty much anything i threw at it. This thing will print on pretty much anything you can stuff in it, that is, between 11 inches by 12 inches by 4 inches, and it doesn’t even have to be printing directly onto the very top flat surface. You can print on curved things or things with some variation to the surface. I think it can print to a depth of maybe a couple millimeters or maybe a few millimeters, and to top it all off, it doesn’t just print color. This machine prints texture. It uses a special ink that it layers on top of itself kind of, like a 3d printer to create textures.
I was able to create a texture that felt a lot like wood or in a design for make magazine. We made little gears that stuck up out of the surface. It is insane. So, let’s talk about use a little bit.
I have actually seen one of these in a makerspace and it makes a lot of sense to me. I know some people might say you know. If you’re not doing putting just putting logos on things for promotional materials, why would you want one of these well as a multi-purpose tool for a makerspace? This thing’s kind of incredible i have to point out roland, did not sponsor this video.
They sent us the unit to test to film. We got to send it back when we’re done, but you know i kind of got ta go with my gut here and say this thing is incredible: you can print on almost anything. So imagine you have this in a maker space.
You know you’ve got uh makers that might come in and see this as an enticing thing to be able to, for example, start up an etsy shop with different materials that have their custom designs on them. You know i i personally thought on that direction. Whenever i created this octopus – and i printed it on the journal and on an ipad – and i mean it just seems like there’s so many options there now – one thing people are going to bring up is that there is a cost associated with this in the inks And that is true, just like, if you had a cnc router or something like that, you’re going to have a cost in end mills you’re going to have a cost in materials with a printer. The cost is inks and it’s not super cheap, but i can definitely see this having a place in a makerspace. So how much does a printer that can do all this crazy stuff cost well listed on their site? This is marked at nine hundred 17995 five dollars. The inks i was able to find online anywhere from two hundred fifty dollars to four hundred fifty dollars depending on the vendor, and that’s probably in line with what you would expect for the uh the materials in a machine like this one experiment i wanted to do.
I asked them if it would print on 3d printed materials, and they said they couldn’t tell me for sure whether it would or not, i suspect again that goes back to legal and whether they’ve tested it and all the variations out there. So, of course, i just printed something and threw it in there and tried it, and it worked just fine. This printer is freaking awesome.
The software to run this machine, isn’t the dumbed down kind of super. You know easy to use experience that we saw with their direct-to-garment printer. This instead is more like something you would find in a professional print shop.
It’S got tons of features that allow you to take. You know, for example, a single file like what i had for the the design for the make logo and split apart. The different elements assign different attributes, such as the texture and kind of create and customize these files, all within the print software itself, which is extremely powerful. It did have a little bit of a learning curve and it took me a few tries to kind of remember where everything is, but i actually picked it up faster than, for example, you would pick up design software, like you know, illustrator or photoshop, or something like That for more information on this machine go to rolanddga.com and look at the lef series of uv printers. Now, of course, this works with all the other roland products, which means that if you were to, for example, print on wood, a bunch of designs and print the right marks on it, then you could take it over to the roland laser and cut it out to You know perfectly fit around those designs, all their products work together in similar ways. Thank you for joining us on this video.
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Also, if you go to community.make.com, you can join our online community and be able to discuss some of this stuff behind the scenes with me, while i’m playing with it and testing it out and stuff and filming the videos and giving me ideas to discuss things like That so go to make.co join up and talk to us behind the scenes. We’Ll see you next time, you .