Entradas Etiquetadas :

SEISTAG

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.

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.

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!

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.

Visiting Mexico

On the first week of November 2017, a technician of SEISTAG visited Mexico. This visit focused on testing the local market for the products coming out from PRINTODECO Project which are based on newness and design.

The Mexican furniture became important activity thanks to the rustic furniture and the American market. The development took advantage of the natural conditions of Mexico, which is a huge country with large natural resources and low labour costs. Moreover, Mexico is very well placed, close to the biggest markets in the world, which are the EEUU. Thanks to this, Mexico reached a prominent position within the international furniture market between the seventies and nineties.

Since then, the furniture industry in Mexico has shown a great deterioration. The traditional furniture business based on the low costs of the Mexican labour force and took advantage of being placed close to North America market. In the context of globalization, those advantages became irrelevant against producers coming from Asia.

During the last decades, the main demand on furniture moved to low price goods, mainly coming from Asia. The local industry sowed down due to the lack of technology, innovation and design added to the globalization of the sector changed the situation. The local industry lost the traditional advantages and therefore its competitiveness. For that reason, the biggest investors changed its preferences towards processes based on raw materials. Meanwhile, the demand for high quality goods, innovative products and exclusive furniture stablished as the new furniture market in Mexico as Asia producers cannot provide that kind of solutions.

SMARTER TOGETHER

PRINTODECO Partner took place at SMARTER TOGETHER. This is a European Project focused on Sustainable development. The proposal of the Project is to build that Sustainable development on people: in integrated, inclusive societies that develop in partnership and foster dialogue among all parties. The collaboration between PRINTODECO AND SMARTHER TOGETHER is part of the strategy of linking European Projects to reach higher visibility for the actions of the projects.

SMARTER TOGETHER work plan is leader by Munich, Lyon and Vienna that act as lighthouses. It is followed by five other cities such as Santiago, Venice, Sofia, Yokohama and Kiev. The Project fosters user-centric innovation by involving even more people and stakeholders in the co-creation and design of new services and solutions. For that reason, SEISTAG was present at an action focused on co-design that was hold in Santiago de Compostela on Friday, October the 20th. The action was directed by local creatives named cenlitrosmetrocadrado.

PRINTODECO Partners sustain a deep compromise between design and society. The organisations at the consortium aim to boost local industry, sustainable use of natural resources (such as traditional hardwoods) and productive activities characterized by high added value (such as digital printing). Therefore, the participation of the technicians from SEISTAG at SMARTER TOGETHER was part of its compromise with design industry and local communities.