Using the Vinyl Printer/Sticker Machine: School Market Day 2023

We have addressed the fact that our school has a number of significant items that we are able to use for our students and school events.

Two of these items were used significantly for our 2023 School Market Day, being the HP Latex 335 Printer and the Versa Studio Sign maker Machine.

The larger vinyl prints were made on the HP an example is shown left where the students documented the innovation process and took photographs at each stage of their learning.  They were able to print this poster off and display their learning as part of the market day experience.  This helped shared the learning and creative process with members of the community who came to view the market day.   These prints were extremely large.

The Versa machine was able to produce much smaller prints in a vinyl sticker format that the students used for the packaging of their products.  When combined with the Laser Cutter designing MDF cuts to back the work onto it produced a ready made stand for the display of the work.

The students were able to independently produce the prints using Pic Collage and then convert them for printing using their individual iPads.

Each of the students from the classroom was able to create a unique presentation (as shown left) another bonus was that as it was vinyl the dye used to stain the MDF could be applied after the sticker had been put in place.  This just required the sticker to be wiped down if any dye had moved onto the design.

Another use of the HP Printer was to work in conjunction with some of the Gala games that were run by out senior students at school.   These traditional games had an ideal opportunity to use technology to aide in their creation and advertising and explain the rules of the games.    We had previously contacted some local real estate agents to ask for signs that they did not use and also had sourced some corrugated cardboard for the purpose.  This turned out to be extremely important as it allowed us to have signs that could survive if the weather was slightly inclement - which is was on the night.

It also meant the signs were robust enough to survive some significant wind gusts (which again occurred on the night).   This allowed us to display the events and provide some eye catching graphics.

We were also able to produce the material for specific games that was more durable than would have been possible otherwise.   An example is the golf map shown with this photograph.   This was the target for a game involving throwing ping pong balls at each of the holes with a small prize for being successful.  As it was printed on vinyl it allowed the game to be played numerous times without concern that the game board would be damaged by the competition.

The HP Latex Printer allowed us to print the game board as a single sheet - although it had significant dimensions.