4-color Printing

We print our boards with digital printers and offer 4-color printing at the same price as black and white! Unlike screen printing we don't need a screen for every color and so it doesn't cost any more to print color.

With that said, there is plenty of other issues with color. The first is that we print on a gloss surface. The degree of gloss effects how the color looks to the eye. If you are looking at a paint chip for matte or satin paint, that color will look quite different on a gloss surface. For that reason if you want us to match a color pick one from a Pantone Coated chart, and give us the number. We will match to that.

What we run into most of the time are colors picked from a computer screen. This is impossible to even begin to work with. Go to Best Buy or any electronics store and take a look at the screens all along the wall. They are the best, high resolution screens that exist and guess what? They are not all the same color!

If you don't have a Pantone color chart, the best thing that you can do is actually print the color that you want on to a gloss photo paper with your ink jet and send it to us as a target. We'll take the actual physical target that you send us an match it up in our Pantone book.


The second step when color needs to be matched is the proof. Before we produce anything for you, we will send you a proof of the color. Our graphics' experts will send you our closest match to the Pantone Coated color that you gave us or the one we matched your target to. 99 times out of 100, that is the closest we can get to that color. Without getting into color gamuts and other esoteric information all printing techniques have capabilities and limitations. There are some colors that any printing system simply cannot match. It can come real close, but it can't match them perfectly. For proof of this, take a look at your favorite football team. If the main color is red, look at all the different reds on the uniforms, helmets, sweatshirts, band uniforms, baseball caps, etc, etc. Slightly different materials and different printing systems conspire to create slight differences - and all of them were ordered to be the exact same color red.


Finally, all printed color fades over time. There are no exceptions. Our coatings and inks have UV "packages" to retard fading, and they work to some extent. Nothing, however, completely solves this problem. Outdoor printing fades much faster that inside printing. Generally heat accelerates fading. The type of material and the printing technique factor in as well. We think that our printing has good fade characteristics inside. Outside in the direct sunlight in the southeast it won't last more than a couple years before fading is noticed.


We sell our color capability and want our customers to use and enjoy the ability to own colorful boards at no additional cost. We can add your logo as it is or as a "watermark" in the middle of the layout. We can color the lines, employ borders, and do anything you can dream up with color. Nothing is without limitations, but we are ready to make a utilitarian dry erase board beautiful as well. Call or email us with your designs. Ask for or download our art specifications. Ask for our "Guidelines for Submission", and we will work with you give you the design you want.

Murerase Custom Printed Board for Coaching and Teaching Tennis

We recently made a board for Mike Hamilton of "Fuzzy Yellow Balls". They are on online teaching, coaching and analysts for tennis. They do online coaching and analysis of tennis at all levels. They wanted a "tennis court board" on which they could diagram plays and stategies. They came up with a design, and we did the board. I thought you might be interested in seeing a printed dry erase board "in action".

This is the YouTube address that you can click on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp8VA94QmXw

Or just view it here:

More on trays in hospitals

We've been working on a way to cut/mount framing with a tray that will make hospitals happier with our boards. I still wish we could simply not use the trays on any of the whiteboards we make, but folks want them. It's up to us to find a way to put them on so they don't snag clothing or a person.

We've reset our production equipment to cut the trays on a 45 deg miter and miter the bottom corners of the framing as well as the top corners. I've taken a couple pictures of the bottom of the board with this fabrication technique.















The pictures show the ends of the trays cut on a 45.

We're so pleased with this that we will be making all of our boards that have trays this way in the future. The trays still are aluminum and we have to cut them to size, so it is not impossible to scratch yourself on the end of one.

This process costs a little more, but we're not going to charge anything additional to make the change. We want to keep making the product better! We hope that you agree.




http://www.murerase.com/
sales@murerase.com

Chalktrays or No Chalktrays??
By: Doug Creed, Whiteboard Manufacturer
http://www.murerase.com/

Whiteboards, of course, don’t use chalk at all. The trays, however, remain as a storage ledge for marker pens, erasers and cleaner. They are just as useful as they were when we were using chalk and just as good a dust/dirt catcher and something to rub up against. Certainly more than half of the boards we sell have trays on the bottom edge, but there are two reasons why they are beginning to disappear.

New Magnetic Accessories:
The first reason is the predominance of magnetic boards and the development of magnetic accessories that can be used to allow the storage of pens and erasers right on the board itself. We supply magnetic rings that fit the pens and can be removed and used on fresh pens over and over. The clips come in two sizes. The large clips work with normal sized chisel point pens and the smaller clips go with the medium, bullet point pens. We normally stock both sizes.

Since you need erasers, we can supply them with a magnetic capability as well. They are about twice as expensive, but not as expensive as the chalktray.

Customer Concerns:
The other reason for eliminating the trays comes from our hospital customers. They don’t want anything that could possibly catch a person and do any harm. The trays typically extend 2” to 2 ½” from the wall, and the ends are sharp. Boxed end trays that are found in the school market are generally not used elsewhere due to their expense. In addition they 2 ¾” wide and intrude into the small space that is a typical hospital room.
Some of our customers are using an innovative combination magnetic clip and eraser top cap that provides the user with everything they need to update the information on the board. The picture to the right shows a medium point, bullet pen with a magnetic clip and eraser top.

A greater percentage of our boards are magnetic, and it makes sense to use that feature in as many ways as are feasible. Email me and we’ll send you a sample of a pen, clip and eraser top.

http://www.murerase.com/
dcreed@digistone.com

More on disinfectant wipes and other abuse

We got another board back from a hospital. As with all the rest, there was permanent marker and lots of scratches on the board. It surely was ruined, but the abuse was way out of specification.

The question is whether a film over the printed board might do better. Everything that we've heard says a resounding NO! The film resists the disinfectant, but it doesn't resist the abrasive materials that are used to get rid of the permanent marker.

Murerase will clean up permanent marker with isopropyl alcohol - clean as a whistle. There is no need to use abrasives such as brown paper, 3M pads or Comet. All of these materials will ruin any dry erase surface. With our boards they are entirely unnecessary.

We are running ongoing testing on several ideas that have the possibility of having higher abrasion resistance. We have no conclusions at this time and the boards would be more expensive with an added application. We would really like to know what your thoughts are:

1. Would you pay more (+20%) for a more abrasive resistant board?


2. Should we keep emphasizing proper use of the boards (labels, warnings, training)?


3. Any other suggestions? __________________________

Let us know. We hate to see ruined boards.

Doug Creed

DON'T CLEAN WHITEBOARDS WITH DISINFECTANTS!!!

We print whiteboards for hospitals and the staff has taken to cleaning the boards with disinfectant wipes. Some chemical in the wipes ruins the whiteboards and they can't be erased. Use dry erase cleaner to clean the boards.

Don't use Soft Scrub either. Or any other abrasive cleaner. It scrubs, all right. The finish will be ruined for dry erase in a few weeks.