Anyone here a professional printer?

[motorollin]

My MAME/UAE cabinet has been almost finished for years now, and I haven't got round to completing it. All I need to do is print the overlay for the control panel and paint the cabinet.

I have designed the control panel overlay and need to get it printed. No printing company I have contacted will do this as a one-off. It's 57cm x 18cm, full colour. It needs to be printed either on that thin plastic-like material which is often used for durable business cards, or on good quality paper and then laminated. The key is that it needs to be durable to withstand being used as a wrist-rest, and also thin as I am running out of thread on the shafts of the buttons - so the overlay needs to be no thicker than a few sheets of paper so it doesn't add to the thickness of the panel.

If someone has the equipment to do this and would be good enough to do it as a one-off, I would of course pay for the materials, and your time and expertise.

TIA

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moto

[AJS]

 :idea:  How about a panoramic photo print
 :idea: or a postscript file and getting printed on a colour postscript laser
 

[motorollin]

The problem is that I don't know anybody with a printer which will print on paper that size - otherwise I would do just that.

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moto

[McVenco]

If high resolution or photo-like printing is not really an issue, you could always consider getting it plotted, and then laminated. At work we have an OCÉ A0 color plotter to print construction drawings (AutoCAD). With a bit of tweaking you can print pretty large pictures with such a machine...

[motorollin]

Hmm well the image is true colour and has a lot of gradients, so I'm not sure how well that would work. What kind of resolution could a device like that produce?

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moto

[AJS]

Hi Moto

If you go here photobox

look under poster size prints and they do a panoramic photo just slightly smaller lengthwise than what you want 51cm x 20cm? for £4.99 + p+p
it might be worth a phone call to see if they could use slightly longer paper, or try your local jessops.
Or get it done in two pieces :-o

[AJS]

motorollin wrote:
The problem is that I don't know anybody with a printer which will print on paper that size - otherwise I would do just that.

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moto

do you have a colour printer? and pagestream? you could do it in that provided you can get the paper that length or longer.

[motorollin]

@AJS
Thanks for the link! I'll definitely check it out. As for printing in two pieces, I considered it but I don't want a seam in the middle.

Once at work I tried setting up MS Publisher with a page the width of A4 and double the height of A4, then joined two pieces of A4 together lengthways to make a long piece of paper. I hoped the software would tell the printer to expect a long piece of paper, but when I printed the design the printer jammed after the first page. I suppose it depends on the printer.

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moto

[adz]

I have a poster printer here at work that could do it in full colour for you.

[motorollin]

Hi Adz

If your work allowed you to use it, would you mind doing this for me? Would they charge you? I would of course pay for your time and whatever it costs to send the print to me.

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moto

[juan_fine]

Any Epson photo printer that will take roll paper will do up to 111.8 cm (44")

[KThunder]

im a printer, my work is more in 2-4 color offset line than what you would need. a poster printer like adz has should do well as long as it has high enough resolution and color reproduction.
@adz what type printer do you have?

wow someone asks for a printer and i can reply, i cant really help of course but i can reply.

[Oliver]

slightly off topic question:

I need similar control panel printing, for some rack mount synths I'm building, and wondered how accurate/precise is the geometry of most poster printers? Errors of more than 1mm would start to look crappy, methinks.

I was going to use inkjet printing onto lazertran decal transfer sheets.

The transparency of the lazertran product is a bonus for this stuff, too, as one can check hole marker alignment prior to drilling.

[adz]

@Moto

Send me an email and I'll see what I can do, I doubt you'll have to pay for anything but postage ;-)

@KThunder

Its some big Canon thing, I should know the model, but I can't recall it right now as its at another site. I'm 99% sure it has more than enough res for moto's needs.

[motorollin]

PM sent. Thanks Adz :-D

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moto