Hollywood Monster has bought a 3.2m wide MTEX 5032 direct to textile printer with in-built fixation. So excited was the Birmingham operation that it shot a video of the printer being delivered to site by Portuguese manufacturer POD Iberia distributor Digital Print Innovations (DPI).
“When you have several customers asking for a particular kind of print – like dye-sub for example – we have to listen. The demand seems to have increased certainly in the past six months, so we found ourselves on a mission to find the best direct-to-textile printer to meet these needs. The MTEX 5032, launched at Fespa London this year, ticked all the boxes for us,” said Simon McKenzie, sales director.
Hollywood Monster will start off by keeping it simple, printing onto backlit, display textile and black-out polyester based textiles. Short-run bespoke work will also feature as will an amount of exhibition and retail displays. But McKenzie expects direct-to-textile growing as the demand for flexible, lightweight and re-usable visual graphics becomes more commonplace.
He explained: “When we settled on the MTEX, we were invited to the manufacturing plant in Portugal by specialist textile printer distributor DPI, to see for ourselves and conduct a rigorous testing demonstration. We spent hours there, throwing all sorts of files at the MTEX 5032 and every time, without fail, it produced a vibrant finished result. We couldn’t be happier with our choice and recommend anyone thinking of getting involved in direct to textile printing to speak with DPI as their honest and down-to-earth approach really helped us make the right decision for our business.”
One of the first jobs to come off Hollywood’s MTEX 5032 last week was for the Birmingham Rep Theatre and its production of Tartuffe.
The graphic (pictured) is a 30m x 9m back wall it had to be extremely lightweight and not crease. The job took round seven hours to print and five hours to sew together.
McKenzie said: “The only way we could do the job was on a 220g fabric, and on dye sub so there would be no creasing or UV cracking in the material. Also, the print quality was an important factor, and the vibrant colours work really well with the rest of the set.” Hollywood Monster also produced around 400m2 of digital wallpaper for the set.