When someone says, “I’m going to print something,” you probably imagine them clicking their mouse a couple of times, then reaching over to the printer on their desk and grabbing the paper.
Here at Quimbley’s, when someone says, “I’m going to print something,” it involves several people placing the material on the printer, programmers setting up the parameters of the print, and more ink in a single pass than the average printer houses in their entire system.
And our printers need their own climate-controlled rooms.
Our printers are primadonnas.
When we started Quimbley’s, we knew our focus was going to be on producing games on higher quality materials, primarily wood.
That being the case, there were a handful of printers that could do that type of work at a big enough scale to make it viable for a board game company. We settled on Mimaki printers because of their reputation and ability to print at what is known as 2.5D.
2.5D is the idea that the printers aren’t 3D printers, but the ink is of such high quality that you can print layers on top of layers to create textures that you can’t have any other way. We could physically print our own business cards using nothing but ink if we wanted to.
The easiest example to point to is our Frazetta Tarot Kickstarter. The wooden box we made features some amazing textures that make the cover feel like a leatherbound book with embossed finishings. Multiple layers of ink create that specific aesthetic.
When the printers arrived, they came in these massive boxes. I mean MASSIVE.
I was in my office, and someone shouted that the printer had arrived. I went into the warehouse to take a look and saw this wooden crate about six feet long and ten feet wide. I thought to myself, “That’s a big printer.”
Until someone pointed out that that specific crate was merely one of our small laser cutters. The actual printer then came into view.
Its box was ten feet by thirty feet and required a special forklift to bring into the building. Now THAT was a big printer.
It took a week to set up with techs flown in from California. We had to build a humidity-controlled tent around the machine because it needs to stay at a constant temperature and moisture level. Every time you walk into the tent, you feel like you’re in New Orleans in August. It’s hot and humid.
Now when we print, generally we’re bringing over a 4-foot by 8-foot board, placing it on the printer, and watching as the entire print apparatus swings back and forth over the material. Each pass lays down a strip of ink and then passes back over with more ink, or clear gloss, or whatever else we need. The entire time it’s also blasting the material with UV light to cure the ink instantly.
The stuff we’ve been able to produce on these machines is incredible. We’ve printed on wood, metal, paper, cardboard, acrylic, glass, fabric, you name it. One company experimented by printing on water, and it worked. We’re not going to try that one, but you can see the versatility of such a machine.
It has allowed us to run tests on products and make changes in real time. We were printing the tarot mats for the Kickstarter and found that the fabric we were using was darker than we expected, so the image bled into the fabric too much. Five minutes later, we were able to change a single setting in the root file and reprint before production, solving the problem without having to communicate to a foreign factory across the Pacific Ocean and waiting weeks for a sample before knowing there was a problem.
It’s been awesome!
And we’ve also been able to move faster on some of our new games (and those Petersen Games that so many people have been waiting for). Right now, I have a copy of Kung Fu Vampires on my desk that we’re going to playtest this afternoon, all printed on wood with its standees, exactly as it will look in full production. And it was printed thirty feet from where I’m sitting.
The current printers we have are just part of Phase One of our factory too. We are setting up card printers and cutters, engravers, everything that will allow us to produce exactly what we need right here in-house.
Plastics, unfortunately, are still a little ways off, requiring us to use the old factories in China and having to wait months for samples and molds, but eventually that will all be brought here as well. I can’t wait.
There’s nothing quite like creating something and seeing it come to life physically right before your eyes. Amazing things are on the horizon, both announced and unannounced.
We’re creating some fun things for everyone; casual players and the hardcore Cthulhu cultists out there. We’ll have games with wooden standees and games with full production plastics.
The last six months have been a whirlwind of creation and creativity. The next six months will be a whirlwind of production and fabrication (and even more creation and creativity!).
Thanks for coming with us on the journey. We’re only on the first lap, and we have a long and exciting road ahead of us. We hope to see you along the way!
