Lippe Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired - Improving quality of life
Since March 2023, the Lippe Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (LBSV) in Detmold have a Mutoh XpertJet 461UF flatbed printer with UV LED. It opens new, lucrative markets for special needs signage and other products while creating opportunities of livelihood and participation for those entitled to benefit from this recognised workshop for people with disabilities.
"Initially, we were actually looking for a 3D printer," recalls workshop manager Marco Dröge. This was intended to facilitate the in-house production of matrices for Frottage shopping bags. The jute bags with the colourful motifs, each a little differently, are a bestseller. Around 150 visually impaired people with various other disabilities have jobs at the workshop. They have been offered work opportunities, eg; at assembly and packaging, as well as professional qualifications.
"When researching for a 3D printer, however, it turned out that a UV LED printer actually meets our requirements much better. This is because we need flat semi-reliefs with a height difference up to one millimetre for the Frottage matrices. This can be achieved much more easily and quickly with UV LED printing", Dröge points out.
Until recently, the templates have been crafted in-house from hard cardboard or as simple Linoleum cuts. Thanks to the textured printing option of the Mutoh XpertJet 461UF flatbed printer with UV LED, matrices up to A3 are now made digitally.
"This allows us to respond much faster to customer enquiries and switch to new motives," says the workshop manager happily. He has been responsible for the in-house digital and offset printing facilities for more than 17 years. "Our jute bags are particularly popular with local businesses, such as the Detmold H&M store."
"With the help of the Mutoh XpertJet 461UF, we want to modernise signage and add Braille."
- Marco Dröge, workshop manager of the Lippische Blinden- Sehbehindertenverein e.V. Detmold
From shopping bag to Braille sign
“We had another important requirement for our UV-LED printer investment to work out,” explains Dröge, “as we wanted to modernise our in-house signage, too. Our beneficiaries need Braille symbols on the guidance systems for orientation. If you emboss these raised characters manually, it is very time-consuming and limited to paper as a printing medium. With our new printer, we can now make special needs signage ourselves, as the Mutoh XpertJet 461UF is capable of printing up to nine layers of clear or coloured ink to form Braille characters."
The Mutoh XpertJet 461UF prints with four colours (CMYK), White and Varnish on a broad variety of substrates from plastic to metal and wood. Thanks to the white ink, even motives on dark and coloured media are possible. The back of a Braille print with the Mutoh XpertJet 461UF is completely smooth. "This makes it much easier for sighted people to read double-sided prints," explains Dröge, as, when manually embossing on paper, indentations are created, which makes any back-side typeface very hard to read for people with eyesight.
At the LBSV, they do know a thing or two about print. For decades, people with disabilities in cooperation with employment and career helpers have been producing letterheads, business cards and other commercial jobs as well as advertising prints in their facilities.
The print room contains two Heidelberg analogue presses, a digital printer for full-colour print runs up to A3 and a fully equipped bookbinding workshop. However, signage printing will be a new area of business, and Dröge has high expectations of it: "More and more companies and authorities want to offer special needs signage. This is particularly important for us as a society with a rising number of aging citizens.”
Producing Braille Signs
It is quite easy to download some fonts of Braille, developed by Louis Braille in 1825, on the Internet and use them for embossed printing. Letters and numbers consist of a grid of up to six dots in two rows. Long-term Braille users can feel them at a speed quite similar to the eyesight readers, but a layperson needs to concentrate and learn a lot on getting to grips with the unfamiliar characters. "In our workshop, we have lots of first-hand experience, and our proofreaders and testers are available right on site," says Dröge happily.
Jakob Töws creates Braille prints in Adobe Photoshop. Since March 2023, the trained special education nurse has been responsible for prepress and operation of the Mutoh XpertJet 461UF flatbed printer. The Braille types are saved as a PDF or as a colour excerpt and transferred to the Mutoh Edition Digital Factory. Alternatively, it is also possible to use CAD Link Digital Designer software with Braille module. "We have now extensively tested the Mutoh UV flatbed printer and are very satisfied with the results," explain both Töws and Dröge. "Braille characters from this printer can be felt very well at a structure height of 0.4 mm." They also comply with the DIN 32986 | 2019-06, which regulates tactile lettering for indoor and outdoor use in Germany.
New customers, brand-new products
Currently, the workshop of the Lippe Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired is developing new products with the Mutoh XpertJet 461UF and presenting them to potential customers. Due to the large passage height of 150 mm, the printer is not only suitable for flat objects, but also for direct printing onto small items such as promotional gifts. "Dedicated workshops for impaired people need to be much more market competitive today than just a few years ago," explains Dröge. "According to the law, the basic wage received by those entitled to benefits must be earned within the procedures."
In the future, high-margin signage and other products from the Mutoh XpertJet 461UF will help with that. They will be manufactured by visually impaired people right at the workshop, who will be trained how to operate the UV LED flatbed printer and supported by Jakob Töws "The printer is really easy to use," explains Dröge. "We know that our workers obviously need support with the exact placement of the substrate, but otherwise they get along well. Everyone here is already looking forward to the possibilities that the Mutoh XpertJet 461UF will offer us. And, of course, to all the great new products we will be able to place on the market!"
