Osburn Signs—with locations in St. Petersburg, Florida and Logan, Ohio—has been in the sign making industry since 1999. They specialized in using screen printing and cuttable films to produce signs, along with providing long term customer service and specification advice to their customers. As their production output increased to match the demand from a growing list of satisfied customers, Osburn Signs decided it was time to try their hand at digital printing. They had mixed success with the digital printing platforms available at the time, and it wasn’t until 2012 that Osburn Signs met the Avery Dennison TrafficJet™ Print System.
Osburn Signs was part of the beta testing for the first TrafficJet Print System and decided to give it a shot. After having success with the platform, they decided that digital printing was here to stay and have now accumulated six TrafficJet printers, from the original version to the Plus and then the recent version of Xpert. These printers are frequently running at full capacity and often even overnight to keep up with the high demand from the shop. However, running jobs overnight can be risky as there are no operators to address potential problems or errors. Any mistake can lead to a loss of material, time, and profit.
Enter TrafficJet Pro. With print speeds up to 850ft2 (79m2) / hour, the TrafficJet Pro is designed for large sign operations, and can often replace a screen printing workflow. Not only does this mean fast production for large quantities of high-quality, durable, custom traffic signs, but it also eliminates many of the problems associated with screen printing: screen inventories, toxic fumes, waste water, and long dry times—to name a few. TrafficJet Pro also reduces the footprint needed to produce the same amount of signs when compared to screen printing.
Because Osburn Signs is no stranger to digital printing and TrafficJet, they quickly signed up to be one of the first TrafficJet Pro customers in the United States. Founder Jeff Osburn said, “[other platforms] were slow, expensive, and lots of things would break… we had a better feel for the quality of TrafficJet based on our experience and trusted [Avery Dennison].” This trust was rewarded by TrafficJet Pro as it was able to consolidate the work from the six other TrafficJet printers into one workflow on the Pro, and the fast print speeds prevented the need to run the jobs overnight. “It has brought our scrap risk down,” says General Manager Casey Burdette.
The TrafficJet Print System has not only made life easier for Osburn Signs, it’s also brought in new business from jobs that can’t be reasonably produced with other traditional methods. For example, an “adopt-a-highway” project that required complex multi-color signs with variable names. “The signs needed to have multiple colors and be variable based on who was adopting each section of the highway,” Casey explained. With traditional sign making methods this job would be very time and labor intensive. But with TrafficJet it’s no more difficult than a standard sign job. All of the custom signs can be designed in one file and then printed in one run. “We’ve had great success doing it,” said Casey.
Despite their roots with screen printing, Osburn Signs is not afraid to fully embrace the digital sign revolution. “The reliability of multi-color printing and the ease of use has increased our digital printing output,” said Casey, “with printing we’ve found that there is always production moving and there is no wasted downtime.” The industry-leading speeds of TrafficJet Pro make the idea of leaving screen printing behind all the more tempting. Jeff explains, “the speed of Pro really does allow us to consider replacing screen printing, especially because of the space of our facility. It would allow me to get my office back!”
Follow Osburn Sign’s lead and join the movement towards sustainable traffic sign production today with TrafficJet Xpert and TrafficJet Pro. Contact us to learn more.
