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Modern society surrounds us with opportunities to gamble including lotteries, casinos, scratch cards and on-line poker. One sector that remains prevalent is fruit machines and with an increase in jackpot values, their popularity continues to grow.
Why is this important to our industry? Because the graphics are key to the machine’s success. Just like point of sale, the punter has to be persuaded to thrust their hard earned cash into the slot in search of that elusive win.
Traditionally every part of the printed image on a fruit machine was screen printed but now in many cases there is a happy marriage of screen printing and digital printing. Solid special colours and white are all screen printed with some of the full colour elements digitally printed. Combine this with mirroring using silver nitrate and ammonia and it creates a highly compelling graphic that will attract gamers once mounted onto the machine.
A key element of all these decorating processes is cleanliness. The finished image is always backlit and any flaw will be obvious. This applies to single layers of colour or multiple layers, where dust particles, squeegee marks, or banding will be there for all to see. Ideally printing should take place in a clean room, but certainly lint free wipes are essential and the glass must be well cleaned before printing since a solitary thumbprint can ruin an otherwise perfect ten colour print.
This is not a process to be taken lightly - glass processing and subsequent printing is a challenging activity. Specialist in this area, Shades Screenprint is able to take origination from customers or create the image from start to finish. Two considerations in image design are registration accuracy and the effect of back illumination on the perceived colour. It may only be a game but designers, quite rightly, are pedantic about colour matching and tonal range. This is where digital printing can produce graduations that would be difficult with screen printing.
The techniques used in the printing gaming machine displays can be transferred seamlessly to other applications where close visual inspection is the norm. None more so than vending machines, where creating an appetising image on the side of the dispensing machine is an essential stimulus to a sale. Reproducing brand colours accurately is also key, both to attract customers and to keep the marketing department of the manufacturer satisfied.
Cleanliness and best practice are essential ingredients for success. One example comes from a company trying to implement standard operating procedures. The company was aiming for zero defects and the application was such that the substrate had to have no dust particles or contamination on the surface.
Working in a clean room using tacky rollers to remove any loose dust, the operator was observed using his hat to wipe the surface of the substrate before operating the machine. When questioned, he responded: “Well the hat is clean!
This illustrates the point that no matter how comprehensive the standard operating procedures may be, operators must understand the reasoning behind them, otherwise contraventions such as this will occur regularly. Once people understand why a particular process is employed it is amazing how they can maintain and even improve the process rather than degrade it as was the case in this instance.
What is evident now in companies that are new to the screen printing process is a total change in culture. Gone is the idea of screen printing as a black art, replaced instead by an understanding that it is an engineering process. This has come about because the process is being adopted by high tech manufacturing companies which are governed by statistical process control, where every parameter is measured and recorded.
It is no longer acceptable to check mesh tension by the sound of a sharp tap to the mesh, or mixing inks where the unit of measurement is a glug, a dollop, a dribble or a drop. Replacing this calumny of process control is the quest for accuracy. Viscosity measured within specific tolerances, electronic weigh scales and controlled operating temperatures are just some of the potential variables which are now accurately controlled. Quite simply, if you can’t measure it, you can’t control it.
Not so long ago some practioners would print six colours or more when printing four colour graphics. Cyan, magenta, process yellow and process black were printed, then a 'wash' of cyan, or a second layer of magenta to correct the imbalance of colour. It is scary how much ink was wasted and how much work had to be reprinted.
One of the advantages of the current financial stranglehold on business is that we have to work smarter to extract more profit from reduced turnover. The aim has to be zero defects. In a typical print business working at a five per cent profit margin, one reject will require the production of twenty good prints to recover the loss of that single reject. This applies in any business, as the cost of rejects comes directly off the profit.
How 2010 will treat the industry is an unknown, but one thing is certain: survival and prosperity is very much in our own hands. It is not just a matter of measuring ink mixes, but monitoring and improving every part of a business. It's not going to be easy, but the industry as a whole will come out of it fitter and better placed to take advantage of the upturn.
How many of your customers have asked about the carbon footprint of your printing service?
