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COSME

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.

COSME’S February 2018 networking day!

This April saw us celebrating two years of fun-filled, design-based COSME projects, a festive follow up to last year’s COSME Networking Day in October 2017 where the COSME community met last. Last month, the major policy event ‘EU Industry Days’, organised by EASME, has provided a space to promote exciting projects ranging from recycling children’s toys, improving the indoor air we breathe and finding safe solutions to monitor childrens’ growth and mobility. Proving once again that innovation and diversification are but a few of descriptions fit for COSME’s selection of entrepeneuring SMEs this call!

The COSME stand was visited by Commissioners Mrs. Elżbieta Bieńkowska for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, and Mr. Carlos Moedas for Research, Science and Innovation. Also present were the European Parliament President Mr. Tajani and Mrs. Lowri Evans, Director General of Industry and both were very interested in all the promising developments the four present projects can already be proud of.

Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska talked to the founders of each of the four projects while admiring the tangible results of COSME funding in SMEs. Ms. Lowri Evans was very interested to learn in which ways COSME helped the SMEs to scale up their innovative ideas and turn them into businesses.

Our EP President Tajani also dedicated his time to the 4 COSME projects and was more than happy to pose for pictures you can enjoy watching on Flickr.

Here you will recognise your peers from the COSME design based consumer goods in full European entrepeneuring mode!

Commissioner Moedas has become a fan of Eco-Birdy that recycles plastic toys and transforms them in beautiful design furniture for children. Mr. Moedas praised the project on his Twitter account as one of the best examples of circular economy. Ecobirdy has also been posted on EC’s facebook page: a great achievement as the web has many followers across the whole of Europe! Congratulations!

COSME is the EU programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). It runs from 2014 to 2020 with a planned budget of €2.3bn and supports better access to finance for SMEs and to markets, rewarding entrepreneurship and offering more favourable conditions for business creation and growth in Europe.

We are currently harvesting some very promising results on the efforts invested in the implementation of our ideas and projects. We are very proud to be part of the group and of the wonderful ideas that just seem to keep on coming! So spread the COSME BUZZ!

SEISTAG at CMD 4.0

On February the 27th, the 4.0 commission of Cluster da Madeira hold its first meeting. The encounter took place at FEUGA installations in Santiago de Compostela (Galicia). During that afternoon, several companies of the wood industry shared their experience on TIC implementation within the wood industry.

There was SEISTAG among the participators, who included important local industries such as FINSA, BETANZOS HB or ALIUSPORTA. The technical coordinator of PRINTODECO Project give details on the COSME European Project to the all the companies interested on it.

All the Companies showed their interest on the introduction of innovative technologies in order to improve processes during the meeting. Artificial vision and collaborative robotics seem to be the most interesting technologies in order to improve competitiveness within the conventional industry.

Product innovation also catches the attention of the entrepreneurs, but this kind of development represents a different level of compromise, as market uptake is difficult to predict. For that reason PRINTODECO Project seemed interesting to many industrials who recognize the challenge of implementing an innovative productive process.

DIGITALLY PRINTED BOARDS

The technical coordinator of PRINTODECO Project shared the achievements of the Consortium within COSME networking event held in Brussels on 19th of October 2017. This meeting focused on the digitally printed boards and its possibilities to convert in an emerging alternative for imprinting of melamine decorative paper.

During the presentation, people attending to the meeting had access to digitally printed boards. In addition to this the make of process was shown by means of sharing white paper, printed paper, resin impregnated paper and raw boards (chipboards and MDF).

By sharing this material made possible to understand the productive process and the challenges of the project: low prices and large scale married with high technology to reach a huge market. During the presentation, the public could get their copy of the book showing PRINTODECO advances. In addition to the book, flyers and catalogues of the Project were available for the people interested on PRINTODECO. Another technical material shared with the public were the colour management proofing process.

The meeting succeed to catch the attention of the participances and to demonstrate the evident advantages of digital printing. In addition, it has been identified that the products obtained from PRINTODECO project will allow a high customization rate, a considerable time to market and production cost reduction, as well as a high business model replicability rate and the increase of market share.

B2B LEARNING EXCHANGE

Coordinator of PRINTODECO, other partners of the projects selected under the COSME program and participants from European Commission had two days meeting in Brussels. This meeting took place in Cover Garden Auditorium on October 19th and 20th. At the event a large debate was held. During the first day of the meeting the building up on the discussion and exchange held on impact with the wider audience of COSME projects. Day two takes back the discussion to the Community of 10 projects to deepening on harvesting and impact.

The main attention was paid to an effective ´B2B learning exchange´ on market uptake and to a facility networking and synergies with other projects. PRINTODECO agreed with proposal to build a community of the projects. This community helps to get an insight on the scope of the individual projects and to provide information on the administrative and financial management of COSME projects. PRINTODECO shared information of the project monitoring, financial reporting and review.

Two principal actions decided to undertake as a result of the meeting were the followings: (i) ´B2B leaning exchange´ as market uptake project, (ii) ´B2B leaning exchange´ as managing the COSME design based consumer goods project.

The companies at the meeting showed interest in the project idea and main objectives of it.

Teaming up for success

PRINTODECO Project will be presented at COSME networking event to be held on 19th of October 2017. The meeting is focused on “teaming up for success”, it will help to share experience between innovative European companies. Project partners will explain the world of melamine boards and how can it change due to digital printing. They will show new expected products and possibilities. By means of the new possibilities, new products are possible as unexpected effects and are possible. The technical coordinator of the project will be present.

During the presentation, the first digitally printed boards will be shown. Also, many details on how they were made will be explained. Challenges such as colour management and image processing. In addition to this, the customization tools will be explained. The presentation of the Project will be highlighted one of its major concepts which is radical change that digital printing brings into the value chain of the melamine board.

As the project is focused on market uptake and business development, the attention will be placed at business opportunities, new markets, marketing strategies, etc. The proposal of PRINTODECO Project will simplify the access of digital printing to new markets such as melamine boards. By doing this the framework conditions for the competitiveness of SMEs will be improved.

PRINTODECO volume 1

PRINTODECO partners present a book showing the advances of the Project. It was printed on September 2017 in full colour, with 77 pages and 43 pictures. The new book includes the project explanation, the presentation of the companies and news on the Project evolution from April 2016 to July 20017. It resumes the execution of Project during this period.

The book describes four Spanish Companies which participate in PRINTODECO Project: TORCULO, SEISTAG, LOSAN and LOGISIETE. The publication resumes the work done during first period of the Project, starting from the management of coordination of effort amount all the partners to ensure the effective operation of the project and ending the dissemination and the exploitation of project results.

The book includes the information about 17 project meetings and shows PRINTODECO results in the field of image customization and colour management. It also deals with trends and international market opportunities. Finally, the publication of PRINTODECO project describes the possibilities to innovate in terms of surface design.

The book will be presented at Brussels meeting to be held on 19th of October 2017. This is a meeting within COSME networking event, which is focused on “teaming up for success”.

At Feira do Moble

On September the 20th, two COSME projects at Feira do Moble da Estrada. This is an international meeting on furniture paying special attention to wood industry and design. The presentation took place during the professionals meetings. Those are a series of encounters hold between 19th to 21st. The Technical Director of PRINTODECO Project was in charge of the contents of the encounters.

In addition to PRINTODECO Project, during the encounter it was presented WORTH Project. This is a European Project focused on helping designers and producers to collaborate. The idea caused interest among the community who show interest on participating.

PRINTODECO and WORTH Project were presented along a day dedicated to designers. The meeting counted with the participation of Fermín Blanco, Xulio Turnes and Tamara Vila. They are young talents on design who show different approached to the challenge of innovative wood design.