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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.

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.

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.

Five years old

In 2018, SEISTAG will be five years old. The company is celebrating and wants to thank the PRINTODECO Partners for their trust and wisdom on wood… It has been a great opportunity for SEISTAG to share a European Project with five star companies such as TORCULO, LOGISIETE, and LOSAN. This collaboration has helped SEISTAG to make great leaps forward.
In addition to the inspiration provided by the project partners, SEISTAG wants to acknowledge the European Agency for SMEs for its support since the PRINTODECO Project was rewarded the grant in 2016. Many things would not have been possible without its help.
As a result, SEISTAG reached many recognitions over the last years. In 2015, the company was recognized as “Innovative SME” by the National Ministry for Economy. In 2016, the Regional Government awarded SEISTAG with the “silver label” of Innovative Companies: occupying the 13th position in terms of innovative activity in Galicia. In 2017, the well-known Ardán Business Data Base included SEISTAG in the category of “Gazelle Company” because of three consecutive years of turnover expansion. Today, in 2018, SEISTAG is happy and prouod to be shortlisted the Financial Times as one of the 1000 fastest growing European Companies.
These achievements have been made possible thanks to the company personnel. Their ambition, professionalism and effort enabled SEISTAG to reach the current position. So, Thanks to all!

PRINTODECO – the next step!

The end of April had us enjoying a well organized and very personal presentation by TÓRCULO COMUNICACIÓN GRÁFICA, S.A.

It was time to present the next step in the PRINTODECO project and the company’s director and one of the project’s main driving forces, Mr. Jacobo Bermejo, made sure his guests were taken care of!

The evening started of with a presentation of PRINTODECO’s main goals and objectives. Judging by the looks on the faces of the nearly 100 guests who had gathered, interest was captured by an interesting outline of the project’s main results. The professionals from across the printing world were visibly impressed by the promise Digital Printing offers of printing alternative substrates like the project’s melamine decorative paper. As a main benefit, Mr. Bermejo outlined that digital printing will provide flexibility and personalized design to the boards. More interestingly, it will allow SMEs focussed on design and/or printing to enter the decorative board market. Music to many of the graphic designers’ ears, present in the audience!

After another much applauded conference by José Luís Moro, Creative Director of Pinguïno Torreblanca, about new ways to use our sense of humor (if any!) in publicity, Tórculo’s new Indigo 12000 Digital Printer was presented. Guests were attended by the company’s personnel who patiently answered all questions about the impressive new printer.

The succes of the evening was sealed off by an energetic performance of a live band who had turned one of the offset printers into a very original stage! While enjoying a drink and of course some very tasty ‘tapas’, they’re seemed to be no doubt about it among the professsionals present: digital printing and decorative boards have a very promising future ahead of them!

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.