Italy - Specialists in customization have recently gone beyond traditional digital printing applications, taking on one of the most intriguing art forms: the mosaic. A collaboration between Roland and Shock Line has resulted in the creation of mosaics done with a digital printer.
This is an extension of the concept of a mosaic, executed using digitally printed graphics, and, in this case, automated cutting as well.
Let’s look at this application more closely. The graphics are manipulated using Corel Painter™ to generate a series of uneven pieces, the elements that create a real mosaic, where unevenness is a hallmark of the medium.
Once the tessellation is turned into a vector file, it is tiled and cut with a Roland plotter on sandblast. Why sandblast? Because its thickness allows the designers to later remove the sandblast mask.
Once the wall has been properly prepared with a layer of mortar, the sandblast is then applied where the mosaic will be installed.
The mortar adds texture to convey the rich look of the ancient art.
Once the sandblast is applied, the empty pieces of the mosaic are filled in with the same mortar. When drying is completed, the tessellated graphics of the file that has been created are printed on the PS Fresco material and applied on the dried mortar. The printed pigment on PS Fresco is transferred to the mortar using water. Once the PS Fresco is removed, the sandblast is removed as well and the pieces are filled in with the applied graphics.
The result is extraordinary! Moreover, production times are shortened to just two days, which is the time needed to complete the drying operation. Mortar can be left white, or colored or embellished with various effects, all without transferring the fresco.
Amazing as the results are, the technical execution is not the most important element of this solution. During the last Roland training course on the application, printers, installers and decorators found themselves joined together by this application not as competitors, but as a value-creation chain for the end users according to a win-win logic: the shop sells, the printer prints the fresco, the installer or the decorator installs it.
Perhaps this way of operating will be the paradigm for the future, where each working competence is heightened in the service of producing a result of unique beauty and quality.
This remarkable collaboration among applications so seemingly distant from one another occurred because of people who thought “outside the box.”
Roland and Shock Line have moved forward using this extraordinary system for visual communications and see a bright future ahead, full of further developments.
A Roland DG Publication | Copyright © 2010 All rights reserved. 2010 | Issue No. 9 | The Roland DG Global Network