There's been an important development with my custom printed layouts so I thought I'd post an update to this thread...
Up until now I have been printing my layouts on a thin polyester material that looks great but lacks the tactile feel of felt or microfiber used in a live casino. Recently I found a source for "Gaming Suede" which improves the feel of the layout tremendously. Many casinos use this exact material on their craps and roulette tables. Anytime you see a detailed layout with images and bright vibrant colors you can bet it was produced via a dye-sublimation process on a "gaming suede" type of fabric. The custom image is printed on special transfer paper using a large format printer. This image is then transferred with heat and pressure to the fabric. It makes for excellent detail, color brightness and color fastness. We saw many examples of this in Vegas:
Before large format printing became a viable option, craps layouts were generally silk-screened on felt. This is a fairly expensive printing process because each color being printed requires it's own screen. The felt provided the dominant color (usually green) and all other colors (like white red and black) were printed on top of the green color. The ink had to be very opaque to cover the strong color of the felt. The inked areas often felt raised because the ink was so thick. The set-up cost for a layout like this is several hundred or even a thousand dollars depending on size and complexity. Not so bad if you're going to print 12 layouts but darn expensive if just need one.
Modern table game layouts are printed on white fabric. The full color printing process lays down ink just like a desktop inkjet printer. This allows for limitless possibilities with respect to color and design. This is also much less expensive than silk screen printing because there is no set-up cost. The only "set-up" is designing the layout image. Printing on actual white felt with full color printing is not possible because felt is a poor choice for the dye-sub process, so a similar fabric is used which mimics the feel of felt as best as possible. The most common fabric used is called "Gaming Suede" as it is somewhat similar to felt. Some people call this "Microfiber." There are different brands and weights but the goal is to feel similar to felt while allowing for detailed, full color printing.
I started designing craps layouts about a year ago because what I found online was cheezy. I wanted hop bets and the fire bet on my layout. And I wanted to compress everything to fit exactly on my smaller table but still have large placed bet squares. Now that I have digitized my basic layout, I have the ability to make a variation in virtually any size or color. I made a double layout for some newlywed friends with their wedding date in the field. I have several smaller single layouts that we use when practice betting on the kitchen table. When we got back from Vegas I made a new layout for our 8' home table that included the all/tall/small rather than the fire bet. I've done paisleys and butterflies in the background. The possibilities are pretty much endless. Here's a few pics of some of the ones I've done so far:
So I wanted to let folks know that I have a better fabric option now. If you are interested in a custom design craps layout for your practice rig, your kitchen table, your craps table or your wall shoot me a PM.
Freak
I wanna see the dust...