Amersham Sign Design Offers Customers Choice and Style Using SAi Flexi Software
SAi’s Flexi software is the “Swiss Army Knife” of tools for Amersham Sign Design, allowing them to do a host of applications including vehicle graphics.
"Think of us as a Swiss Army Knife,” says Perry Brahan, Designer and Director of UK-based, Amersham Sign Design. “We’re a relatively small company offering a wide variety of services, many of them enabled by design, print and cut software from SAi.”
With the right machines and software, and a few people, Brahan and his team produce signage of all types. One of those tools is SAi (Booth 932) Flexi, which enables the company to do the variety of work usually found only in larger companies.
Established in 1986, Amersham Sign Design began with traditional vehicle painting, later moving to electronic, then digital design and print technologies in the mid-1990s. The company began using SAi Flexi in 1996.
“Unlike other systems at the time, Flexi was more comfortable to use,” Brahan says. “Basic functions, like drawing a circle, were easy compared to everything else that was available. More importantly, it offered more file export extensions, enabling files to be used on a wider range of equipment.
“Today, we use it with our HP Scitex FB950 flatbed printer and our HP Latex 360 large-format printer. Flexi exports directly with the Zünd GTK Software to drive our Zünd G3 digital cutter, as well as with our MultiCam 48 Plus CNC router thanks to the direct link with SAi’s own EnRoute software.”
Finding the best solution
Vehicle graphics account for about 50% of the company’s business. These are designed and printed using SAi Flexi, but the majority of work is for partial wraps.
“This is where understanding customer requirements is particularly important,” Brahan explains. “When you mention vehicle wraps, people tend to think of a full wrap, but in fact what suits most businesses are smaller panels or sections with their relevant information.
“Using SAi Flexi means that we can re-print graphics quickly and with good color matching,”
he adds.
Cut vinyl remains a large percentage of vehicle graphics. The print-and-cut capabilities of SAi Flexi, used with the Zünd digital cutter & T160 Summa Cutter, enable speed, minimal material waste and fast, accurate production. The True Shape Nesting feature automatically positions designs for optimal material use, while the speed means any changes in contact details can be addressed with minimal off-the-road time.
Features that ensure quality
“A national restaurant chain wanted its name sand-blasted in stone for all its outlets,” Brahan says. “Using SAi Flexi’s design and cut we produced the masks that would be used by the stone mason to define the areas to be sand-blasted. With the ‘cut order’ feature of SAi Flexi, we were able to choose a sequence that generated the least movement of the cutting head, reducing slippage and increasing registration accuracy.”
Versatility is the key advantage of SAi Flexi for Amersham Sign Design. “With one piece of software, we are able to drive our latex printer, a solvent printer, a UV flatbed printer and the digital cutter,” Brahan says. “It underpins all types of work that we undertake.”
“SAi Flexi interacts seamlessly to produce reliable and repeatable results, so for this demanding task they were ideal,” Brahan concludes. “Other software solutions have come and gone, but SAi Flexi stayed the course and continues to improve. It’s a great advantage for a small company not to have to continually learn new software programs and buy additional licences; it’s the foundation of everything we do.”
