News and events

Printodeco video is up

Since November the 14th, the video of Printodeco is available at YouTube. The collaboration of all partners, and especially through the effort of Torculo and Seistag, made possible the video.

The video was recorded in summer 2018. It demonstrates the achievements of the Partnership of Printodeco Project. This is a collaborative project among four Spanish Companies. The project focused on reducing time to market of design products enabling enhanced possibilities for customization to the customers.

The video shows the way in which a designer can define a decorative pattern and, in just 48 hours, that design becomes a piece of furniture. This is possible thanks to the collaboration of technicians, printers, board makers and furniture makers. In order to make it happen, different resources are needed:

One of the tools is the catalog of ready to print designs. It is a printed booklet, but also a website which enables changing many parameters to the default images. By means of this, the customization possibilities are countless and the designer is not forced to start from scratch.

A second tool is a workflow, which compromises the whole Consortium. It ensures the quality of the images and also of the printing process. Special inks and papers are used and everything is done under special codes to ensure that the paper will fit the boards.

Thanks to the above-mentioned tools, making melamine boards and furniture with the printed paper is a standard process with no extra costs. Thanks to this, the offer of Printodeco can be cost-effective and therefore competitive in a huge market.

Igape visits Seistag facilites

By the end of 2018, the Director of Igape visited SEISTAG industrial facilities. During the visit, the technicians of the company explained the sawing process of SEISTAG. Among the explanations given, the Company shared many details about the innovative processes, all of them focused on adding value to wooden products. The regional press published many details of the visit.

Igape is the Regional Agency for industrial development. It is a Public body, which has contributed to the industrialization of many Companies during the last decades. It has also helped Seistag to expand the industrial process in two directions: to be more efficient at sawing, and to implement technology for drying timber. During the encounter, the Company shared the idea of investing in new industrial processes to be set in the Company in order to produce goods with higher value, which means more local employment.

The Director of Igape showed deep interest on the telecommunication technologies applied to the industry of forest and timber. Those activities are very relevant in the region and could take much advantage from the technical innovations. Regarding this question, SEISTAG is a Company ahead. The manager of the sawmill shared with the Igape Director the “virtual sawmill”. This is currently a website where all the figures of the process can be consulted in real time allowing more accurate decisions. In addition to this, the Company has also developed a TIC system to choose and change the image of the wood surface. This second utility was developed within PINTODECO Project and is open to public access.

Proofing

Printing paper to be used within the industry of melamine boards means large-scale production.

Melamine market is a huge market. The average production is around 3 million square meters per month. Printing such a huge volume is something that ought to be developed within an industrial environment. Therefore, the impact of innovation in this field is very relevant. Nevertheless, there are issues related to this large-scale production, which represent an added difficulty. The printer ought to work nonstop, but at the same time the quality control needs measurements and new design should enter into production every day. Interrupting the production for any of those reasons would be very expensive. Because of this, proofing is needed to control the quality of the color.

SEISTAG designed the proofing technology for PRINTODECO Project. The technological Company proposed a technical solution similar to the one used for large-scale offset production, but this time used not to control an analogical printing device, but a large-scale digital printer. Proofing means printing trials in a small printer in order to keep the big one running nonstop and error free. It is very usual for large-scale production. It is also typical when color is an important element in the image.

Proofing needs profiling the industrial printing device. This is done in three steps. The first step is to measure the real color produced by the printer. Then to compare it with the theoretical color of the original image. Finally, establishing a mathematical relationship between the coordinates of the color to be printed and the coordinates of the printed color. A line describes that relation, and that is the reason why it is called profile. Moreover, as there are four channels of color (Cian, Magenta, Yellow, and Black), four profiles are needed.

Once the industrial partner has been described by means of its profiles, it is possible to print at lab scale as if it were the industrial printer. Note that the lab scale printer should be able to reproduce more colors than the industrial printer. Otherwise, the lab-scale printer would not be able to reproduce the results of the industrial device: a high-quality printer at the laboratory is necessary. Luckily TORCULO owns a machine that suits this need. This enabled proofing during the PRINTODECO Project, which was a technical process to ensure quality steered by SEISTAG within PRINTDECO Project.

Enhanced quality

Moving from analogical to digital print is a challenge due to the high quality of the traditional surfaces produced by rotogravure. As most technicians know, their sharpness and range are difficult to reproduce when using ink jet technology. Sharpness is about resolution. It refers to the detail that the image can contain. Range is about how wide the spectrum of printed colour can be.
As a result of the development carried out by PRINTODECO Partners, they have been able to reproduce the quality of analogically printed images by means of large scale, low cost, digital printing. The development process was steered by SEISTAG. The technicians of the Company looked for the best available technologies. They also proposed the experimental development in collaboration with all the Consortium Partners.
To reach the quality demanded by the customers, LOSAN worked hard selecting the appropriate inks, paper, and head printers. The three variables are linked so they condition the final quality of the printed images. The result of the research carried out by LOSAN helped to achieve a level that might well be described as “sufficient quality”. This means that the customer can hardly distinguish between the analogical original and the digital copy.
The work would not have been possible without the help of TORCULO. This company is 100% focused on Graphic Communication. Therefore, they have acquired the tools and the knowledge to ensure the quality of the printed images. Thanks to their collaboration, the quality of the digital reproduction has improved their CIELab coordinates. This is the standard for the graphic industry and it means that a non-expert would not be able make the distinction between the two samples.
During the development of the printing quality standards, the contribution of LOGISIETE was important. As they are retailers who sale furniture, they are in touch with the final customer. By means of this, they get the best feedback so they can inform about what is considered good enough. During the development process, they provided relevant information on what it is accepted by the market. Now that the Project is finishing, they ensure that the printing technology has reached the quality expected by the market.

At Albura magazine

The last number of ALBURA magazine –JUNE 2018- shows many details of PRINTODECO Project. It offers a two-page review on the Project development, its objective and images of digital printing.
ALBURA is the local magazine published by CMD (Cluster da Madeira e o Deseño de Galicia) the organization composed of more than 50 associates from all over Galicia. It is a periodic publication supported by Xunta de Galicia and IGAPE.
PRINTODECO is a Project of Industry 4.0 named “Industry for Future”. The ALBURA article describes the Project objectives and gives basic details of new forms of production of fully customized products reducing the final costs. Digital printing gives huge possibilities of product personalization therefore ALBURA magazine focuses on the review of PRINTODECO.
According to ALBURA the innovation is the imagination of new products and new production processes. It is a sing of viability and the condition of any enterprise´s success. The full publication of ALBURA magazine can be downloaded at this link.
http://clustermadeira.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Revista-CMD-1-semestre-2018_hojas-sueltas.pdf

Printing directly the boards

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.

Process Validation

In July 2018, the Consortium Partners validated the PRINTODECO process. For that purpose, they invited a designer in the West of Spain to suggest a unique design.

SEISTAG took advantage of this experiment to record the whole production process. It included digital printing, hot pressing, cutting pieces for the final design, and machining them to became doors. Finally, the design became real furniture in East of the Country.

In summer 2018, a large film will be released by TORCULO showing the complexity of all the productive process. Before the film is completed, here is a teaser of it:

Scaling up the printing technology

As PRINTODECO Project moves ahead, new challenges appear. One of the examples is the up scaling the printing technologies. Most of the developments of PRINTODECO have been made using slow printing technologies. Those technologies allow technical development, but they do not support industrial scale exploitation.
Considering that, SEISTAG proposed testing high volume printing technologies during the summer of 2018. For that reason, the companies developed new trials using singlepass printers instead of multipass. TORCULO provided the tools needed to test both technologies: HP INDIGO for singlepass experiments (showed above) and large format plotters for singlepass (used up to the moment on PRINTODECO Project).
Singlepass technology is based on paper passing across a line of print heads, which is wide enough to cover the whole width of the paper. Meanwhile, multipass technology relies on a movable print head travelling across the paper. The first system represents a big investment, but it reaches very high productivity and therefore low productive costs. The second technology is much cheaper in terms of investment, but represents higher costs per square meter and could not supply the amounts of printed-paper that might be demanded by the melamine board industry.

Facing results

On Tuesday 2018 the 19th, the Partners of PRINTODECO Project meet at TORCULO facilities in Santiago de Compostela. During the encounter, the four Companies reach decisions on how to finish the work supported by the Program Customer Orientated SMEs from EASME. They reach two main agreements.
From one hand, the Partners agree that the milestones of digital printing service validation has been achieved. Right now, it is possible to choose from a list of references, add customization with different tools and get a piece of furniture produce on demand. The ambition of the service has been sized to a realistic demand, focussing in SMEs rather than on final Customers. This means that a furniture producer can develop a new model easily, wasting less time and resources than before PRINTODECO.
On the other hand, the Consortium members agree to increase the communication and dissemination activity. The Partners agree to provide information on what are the results and how it was made. For this action, they proposed a communication plan based on social webs. It will be mainly developed by TORCULO and LOGISIETE. In addition to this, the Partners will also release a video showing the digital printing service in real environment. This will made understandable how the designer of a SME can create a new pattern and get a kitchen placed at the window screen of its Company in just one week.

Coordination meeting

On May the 25th, PRINTODECO Partners held an interim meeting. The objective was sharing advances and improving the project coordination. During the talk organized by SEISTAG, the Companies agree about the opportunity of digital printing for customization processes. They also discussed the way in which that opportunity can be implemented in a profitable manner. How can the efforts within PRINTODECO Project be turned into business?
Now that the end of the Project is in the horizon, the Partners Companies are focused on a sustainable exploitation of the technology and knowledge developed throughout the partnership. During the talk, the four Companies agree that the absolute customization is not needed within the décor market. The market of melamine boards is not like T-shirts market. The customer is not looking for its own exclusive design. The potential customer is much more engaged with trends and differentiation. Digital printing is a tool allowing European SMEs to follow the trends, a tool to set up an exclusive catalogue in short time and with little costs.
As the technical director from SEISTAG pointed out, the main issue of PRINTODECO tools is allowing this to be possible. Note that while a T-shirt needs an image of 0,04 square meters, the standard melamine boards images are between 3 and 5 square meters. This means that the technological complexity of producing the bitmap image is huge in comparison to standard personalized products. It is nearly 100 times harder to customize melamine boards than other products!
The next Consortium meeting has been planned in Santiago de Compostela for June the 19th. The date might change but the encounter will surely take place at TORCULO facilities. This is expected to be the last operative meeting within PRINTODECO Project, as most of the work originally planned has already been done.