Wayne Sommers

Wayne Sommers was managing someone else’s screen printing business when an idea occurred to him: He should be working for himself, running his own screen printing business.

Thirty years later, Sommers has taken his business – DSR Screen Printing in Streamwood, Illinois – from a pre-printing operation to a full-scale press shop employing five other people. While DSR does plenty of apparel business, Sommers specializes in printing on vinyl to create custom stadium seating, bar stools, directors chairs, vinyl signs and more.

The vinyl-printing arm of his business led Sommers to look for a solution to slow dry times and constant screen cleaning that came with his existing manual printer. The answer, he determined, was converting his vinyl product to ultraviolet-dried ink.

“With solvent-based printing there’s a lot of ink drying in the screen, cleaning the screens,” Sommers explained.

When his search for an automatic printer with a UV drying light turned up short, he began calling equipment companies to see if it was possible to have something custom made. Where other suppliers turned him down, Anatol stepped up to meet the challenge.

Anatol’s equipment experts recommended the Stratus II, which could be custom-built to include the UV light. The custom machine took six months to build in Poland, and there was about a month’s learning curve to become acclimated to the Stratus II. Now, Sommers said, he couldn’t be happier with the finished product.

“I would highly recommend it to anyone,” he added. “Production has sped up. It’s time savings. It’s money savings. It’s paid for itself 10 times over.”

The Stratus II, together with a Mimaki™ CJV30 print cutter and a CET 64-inch wide UV printer, helps DSR meet its customers’ needs.

Sommers credits Anatol’s experts for his success with the Stratus II, as he only set out searching for an automatic printer with a UV light. The Anatol team suggested the model and helped engineer the custom product.

“I trusted their judgment, and they were right.”