Flatbed printers have changed the way many people look at printing because this printer has made possible printing on substrates that cannot be accommodated by roll-fed printers. With flatbed printers, people can customize everyday objects such as coffee mugs and laptop lids. They can also personalize their interior decorating projects at a different level by designing their own bathroom tiles, by printing their doors instead of painting them by hand, among other things.

Perhaps the most important application that a lot of people found with flatbed printers is in the production of fine art. Aside from the fact that you can print on various printing mediums with a flatbed printer, you can also print one layer after another. This allows artists to create fine art that have a lot of texture. What is even more beautiful about it is that the end result would look as if it was painted by hand instead of printed with a flatbed printer.

It was advancements in ink technology that helped the flatbed printer market grow, and inks need to be versatile enough to print on a wide variety of substrates without a shop needing to stock myriad inks and swap them out between jobs, which would increase expense and decrease productivity. Some inks require primers or pretreatments to be applied to the surface to help improve ink adhesion, while others use a fixer added after printing. Most of the printing we’re accustomed to uses a liquid ink that dries by a combination of evaporation and penetration into the substrate, but many of these specialty substrates have surfaces that don’t allow ink penetration, hence the need to give the ink something to “grab onto.” UV inks are especially helpful for these surfaces, as they dry by exposure to ultraviolet light, so they don’t need to evaporate/penetrate the way more traditional inks do.

 

Much of the available literature on flatbeds indicates that “flatbed printer” is synonymous with “UV printer” and, although there are solvent ink-based flatbeds, the majority of units on the market are UV devices. There are myriad advantages to UV printing—no noxious fumes, the ability to print on a wider range of materials, faster drying times, the ability to add spiffy special effects, etc.—but switching to a UV workflow is not a decision to be made lightly.