By July 2018, most of the objectives of PRINTODECO has been accomplished. The Partnership made possible printing paper using digital printers, and making melamine boards using that paper. By means of this, time to market is now shorter than ever. Moreover, the costs for developing new references dropped. In addition to this, the Partners already explore printing technologies for up-scaling the production.
Nevertheless, the Partners discovered that printing papers has limits for extreme customization. Using printed-paper makes difficult to reach the level of every single board to be different. Therefore, in summer 2018 SEISTAG started a new development line. The new approach relies on printing directly over the melamine board and counts with the support of all the Consortium Partners.
In order to make this possible, different printing technology is used at TORCULO facilities. The printing process moved from water-inks to polymeric inks. Instead of paper passing throughout a line of fixed print heads, large format printers with moving print heads have been used to print directly over large-scale boards provided by LOSAN. Images have been provided by SEISTAG, and LOGISIETE designed the experiment.