GLG ART Custom Engraving LLC
Owner: Laura Gruver
Decorating Technique: UV Printing, Engraving, Sublimation
Website: www.glgart.com
Location: 5008 W Linebaugh Ave Ste 56, Tampa, FL 33624
Email: orders@glgart.com
Phone: 813-962-3342
Family Business and Commercial Success with Compress UV
Dale Gruver, part businessman, part artist is the Founder of GLG ART Custom Engraving LLC. Dale has devoted his business to solve problems. His company is more of a production partner instead of a traditional engraving shop.
GLG ART does some retail business because of their convenient location in North Tampa. But, their main focus is working with other businesses to solve problems. They help other businesses succeed with better marking, signage and promotional products.
Laura Gruver, Dale’s daughter, is now the Owner of the company. Having worked side by side with Dale for years she grew up in the business. Like her father, It’s clear she’s continuing the company’s success.
G.L.G. replaced another brand of UV printer with the Compress iUV600s a year ago. They now use UV printing to add color and TEXTURE to things they couldn’t in the past.
“We have done sublimation for years,” said Dale Gruver, founder of G.L.G. Art Custom Engraving. “The reason we got UV in the first place was for the White Ink, it lets us do things we never could with sublimation.”
Sublimation is very popular in Awards & Engraving shops. But it indeed has a few limitations:
- No dark substrates. When it comes to sublimation, there’s no white ink. Colored inks look dingy and dark when applied to a dark item such as dark wood plaque. They won’t show up on a black background sign or electronics. That’s where the white ink comes in. Printing white underneath lets you create bright and vibrant prints on almost anything.
- Sublimation also requires special blanks. Sublimation inks only bind to synthetic materials. So you often have to buy a “sublimation blank” or “sublimatable” item made for the process
Whereas, the UV Printers (like the Compress iUV600s) can print on almost anything. There’s no special ordering required.
Some of G.L.G’s most interesting projects are for large area business. But it’s the small projects full of creativity that they are most excited about sharing.
Promotional Products
The Gruver’s have pushed the limits of their UV printer by printing incredibly small text for this tiny, tiny desktop computer and keyboard – pictured below. This is just one example of the wide range creative ideas they’ve come up with and shared with their customers over the years.
Problem Solving | Unique Awards
Possibly the perfect example of that combination of problem-solving skills and creativity is the paddle pictured here.
The United States Naval Sea Cadets Corps (USNSCC) were having an event overseas commemorating their international exchange program.
They wanted to give the Cadets something to remember the event by, but the international flights narrowed the parameters of what they wanted to give.
“Nothing metal, nothing sharp that would cause any concerns when going through security at the airport” described Dale.
This was the perfect job for G.L.G. ART. They crafted the wooden paddles from scratch, decorated them with UV Printing and provided them to the USNSCC in gift boxes designed for neckties.
Perfect problem-solving approach!
Commercial Applications
The last example we have of what a smart company can do with UV printing is represented by the picture of the aircraft dial shown.
For years G.L.G. ART had been helping a local customer produce custom dashboard dial faceplates for an aircraft related company – black and white only.
For years the company had been asking about adding green and red to the dials to make them easier to read.
Take a look at the picture below and you can see what a huge difference that color makes! And the detail the iUV600s can provide makes the text and lines clear and legible too.
Since the color was added, that same customer has expanded into custom car dials too!
Problem solved.
Art and Textures
Part of Dale’s problem-solving skills is related to his background in fine arts, and it’s evident in everything he does.
The images demonstrate how he’s added dimension to his own art pieces as well as a photo to canvas work for customers.
See how the horse in the photo stands off the canvas? It actually has different levels for the ears, body and back leg to give it perspective. That was done with the built-in layer capabilities of the UV Printer software.
More about GLG ART Custom Engraving LLC
G.L.G. ART is, of course, also a traditional engraving shop and Dale is a featured cartoonist and contributing writer for the Engravers Journal. You can find his articles here https://www.engraversjournal.com/
Visit GLG at http://www.glgart.com/
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