There is a place in Dallas that is doing prints for a lot of people on metal. That’s probably what those in Arlington are. I saw a show here by a guy I know who had them done there, and they looked very similar to tin types which suited his work derived from 19th century found files from eBay. But this is nothing new. Almost any big city in the US has been doing them for a long time and they aren’t pigments they are dye sublimation usually from the giant HP flatbed printers. Not very high res droplets either. They’ve been used for advertising signage here in Atlanta for about 12 years.
If these in question are pigments then they could be using Ink Aid coated metal, which has also been around a long time to coat metal sheets for inkjet. Problem with that is straight path Epson is necessary to use that material. I tried it about eight years ago on a 44”” printer and after one day of getting head strikes from the aluminum not staying flat, I stopped before destroying my print heads.Im lucky I didn’t destroy that printer. I found if the metal I found and coated was flat enough to use it was way too heavy and slid right down the print path. I tried the kind of coated for inkjet metal that a company in Boston was marketing up to 20x24, super expensive and not impressive at all, and also got head strikes and every other sheet scratched. Maybe Breathing Color has improved it. Still seems way more trouble than it is worth to me. If I were interested in that look I’d probably use one of those metallic papers and cold mount it to a thick metal plate.
Per the OP there are companies that sell solutions that may be applied to metals and other materials that ‘prepare’ the material for direct printing by an injet printer if the material is thin enough to be run through the printer. Otherwise if the target material is to thick to feed through the printer they have a film that you print on and then transfer the image to the material that has been prepared with another one of their Solutions. These companies have some good videos on their site and YouTube.
http://dassart.com
https://www.inkaid1.com/
