A small-format UV printer can be an extremely versatile tool for a prototyping business.
We carry models equipped with height-adjustable printheads and white and clear inks. You can print colors, images, designs, and surface textures on many different objects and rigid and flexible materials, including paper, plastics, flexible films, acrylic, glass, wood, and metal.
You can use a small-format UV printer to start a prototyping business. Or, if you already use 3D printers and CNC milling machines for prototyping, you can expand. Expand your prototyping capabilities with a small-format UV printer.
Who Uses Prototypes?
A prototype is a three-dimensional physical representation of a design concept. Prototyping has long been used in automotive and aerospace manufacturing facilities to test the functionality of specific parts or assemblies.
Today, many inventors, entrepreneurs, marketers, and package designers also want prototypes.
Once they have a prototype in their hands, designers, inventors, and entrepreneurs can physically interact with the design idea. They can test the viability of a design, evaluate its potential, and discover ways to improve it.
Small Format UV is for Entrepreneurs
In the Entrepreneur article “Creating a Product Prototype,” Tamara Monosoff says inventors can use prototypes to describe their products more effectively with attorneys, packaging and marketing experts, engineers, and potential business partners.
Inventors and entrepreneurs typically start with crude prototypes. But as the product moves closer to being manufactured, a working prototype may be required.
The type of prototyping services that entrepreneurs, inventors, and marketers hire depends on the complexity of their designs, types of materials used, and need for technical support and assistance.
Small Format UV is for Designers
Designers who want to get innovative products to market quickly want rapid prototyping so they can test several iterations of a prototype before finalizing the design. UV printers, 3D printers, and CNC milling machines make rapid prototyping more practical and affordable.
The full potential of using small format UV printers for product prototypes is just beginning to be explored. Today, many small format UV printers are used to help designers test and visualize creative concepts for package designs, small displays, gifts, and components for branded or themed environments.
Growing Your Prototyping Business
If you already operate a sign shop or printing business, some of your existing customers may have already asked you to make a few prototypes. Marketing agencies and retailers are experimenting with a lot of creative ways to surprise and engage customers.
But if you’re just starting out, you may want to hire an artist or creative designer to help you imagine the many different types of prototypes you can create with your small-format UV printer. Photograph these samples and post the images online.
Or, take samples with you to meetings of design groups, inventors, entrepreneurs, and business educators. Show them that product creators today don’t have to start out with crude, handmade prototypes of their ideas.
Inventors Love The Quality of UV Printers
The website Free Inventors Help features a list of inventors groups and associations. Meetup lists thousands of local groups for product designers, entrepreneurs, and makers. Many community colleges and libraries also offer training for aspiring entrepreneurs and inventors.
As you network with groups in your community, you may meet local designers, photographers, and artists who have considered creating new types of products they can create and sell. The growth of on-demand printing, online marketing, and e-commerce has made it possible for anyone with a creative idea to start their own business.
With a versatile, small format printer, you can not only help local artists and designers develop prototypes of their ideas, but also print and fulfill orders as they are received.
Choose the Right Equipment
A versatile, industrial UV printer from Compressuvprinter.com is ideal for starting or expanding a prototyping business.
A small-format UV printer can add design details to prototypes output on 3D printers or CNC milling machines. Or, it can be used for prototypes of packages, displays, gifts, and parts that will be printed with branding, icons, instructions, or artistic embellishments. With the right materials, a small-format UV printer can create package prototypes that look and feel identical to the finished product.
Compress® iUV 600s/1200s printers offer fast, on-demand printing on a huge assortment of substrates. Use these printers to decorate sheets of flexible films, label and decal stocks, textiles, and leather; boards used for signs and displays; and three-dimensional prototypes, boxes, props, and decorative objects.
The Compress® iUV 1200s features a 44.7-inch x 29.5-inch print bed and printheads that can be adjusted to decorate items up to 11.8 inches high.
If clients need short-run production of parts or samples for sales meetings, you can use a CompressiUV-600 LNE series printer for uninterrupted printing of hundreds or thousands of industrial parts or objects up to 5.9 inches thick.
Up to 300 17.7 x 17.7 inch trays of objects can be automatically fed through the machine and unloaded to either a conveyor or stacker.
