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process Special Edition on Functional Printing - Durst news for the science and application of inkjet printing - Issue 100 - September 2013 1 News Durst Phototechnik AG exhibits a Rho IP Engine at K 2013 Installation Right the First Time Science & Technology Digitally printed silver inks as a component of functional layers Media & Handling MacDermid Autotype’s Autotex® Softouch™ printed with Rho IP Application “Looks matter” process Durst news for the science and application of inkjet printing 100-09-2013 Editorial Paradigm shift in production Special Edition on Functional Printing Since the beginning of series production, printing has always been part of the process, for example, the lettering on a T-shirt, the wood finish on a desktop, the identification plate on a washing machine and even the floral pattern on a tea set. They are all printed and yet hardly anyone perceives these applications as printing, let alone as being part of the graphics industry. Because series production in today’s world actually often means mass production, the analogue processes used, mainly screen printing and, more rarely, also pad and offset printing, have been optimised in a way scarcely known in the graphics industry. They form part of complex processes with intensive pre and post-processing where only very slight deviations in print quality are acceptable and the speed of the process must be adapted to that of overall production. Often, because of the processes concerned, the conditions for producing high quality printing are far from ideal, with dust, vibrations or heat constantly hampering results. Added to this is the massive pressure of costs produced by large numbers and global sourcing. The requirements in industrial printing are exceptionally high, although this is also countered by great profit opportunities. In a study recently published, IT Strategies estimated the value of these printing services alone at more than US$ 100 billion globally. Printing services in industrial production are considerably less sensitive to economic cycles and trends than those in the graphics industry. Print communication is usually the first to be affected when black clouds gather on the horizon and even in good times it is in ever increasing competition with electronic, media whilst mostly the consumer goods industry only actually suffers when there is a massive global recession. By contrast, industrial printing services are largely crisis proof, although the sheer size of the market also makes them ponderous. Outsourcing of labour-intensive circuits in countries where wages are low leads to long distances to many markets. Enormous volumes consume a large amount of resources which are destroyed at some point on the way from production to the end consumer, whether as production waste or only at the recycling stage, where what could not even be disposed of in clearance sales is finally collected. Also, industrial production cannot escape from the global trend for ever faster and ever more individual goods and services. Against this background, the success which the inkjet process has already been able to record in individual segments of industrial production is not surprising; the most prominent examples here are tiles and a few smaller textile niche sectors. Yet they are no more than a drop in the ocean. In many other industries, inkjet processes have scarcely left any impression as yet.

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Page 1: Special Edition on Functional Printing process - CMS … · process Special Edition on Functional Printing - Durst news for the science and application of inkjet printing ... was

process Special Edition on Functional Printing - Durst news for the science and application of inkjet printing - Issue 100 - September 2013 1

NewsDurst Phototechnik AG exhibits a Rho IP Engine at K 2013

InstallationRight the First Time

Science & TechnologyDigitally printed silver inks as a component of functional layers

Media & HandlingMacDermid Autotype’s Autotex® Softouch™ printed with Rho IP

Application“Looks matter”

processDurst news for the science and application of inkjet printing

100-09-2013

Editorial

Paradigm shift in production

Special Edition on Functional Printing

Since the beginning of series production, printing has always been part of the process, for example, the lettering on a T-shirt, the wood finish on a desktop, the identification plate on a washing machine and even the floral pattern on a tea set. They are all printed and yet hardly anyone perceives these applications as printing, let alone as being part of the graphics industry.

Because series production in today’s world actually often means mass production, the analogue processes used, mainly screen printing and, more rarely, also pad and offset printing, have been optimised in a way scarcely known in the graphics industry. They form part of complex processes with intensive pre and post-processing where only very slight deviations in print quality are acceptable and the speed of the process must be adapted to that of overall production. Often, because of the processes concerned, the conditions for producing high quality printing are far from ideal, with dust, vibrations or heat constantly hampering results. Added to this is the massive pressure of costs produced by large numbers and global sourcing. The requirements in industrial printing are exceptionally high, although this is also countered by great profit opportunities. In a study recently published, IT Strategies estimated the value of these printing services alone at more than US$ 100 billion globally. Printing services in industrial production are considerably less sensitive to economic cycles and trends than those in the graphics industry. Print communication is usually the first to be affected when black clouds gather on the horizon and even in good times it is in ever increasing competition with electronic, media whilst mostly the consumer goods industry only actually suffers when there is a massive global recession.By contrast, industrial printing services are largely crisis proof, although the sheer size of the market also makes them ponderous. Outsourcing of labour-intensive circuits in countries where wages are low leads to long distances to many markets. Enormous volumes consume a large amount of resources which are destroyed at some point on the way from production to the end consumer, whetheras production waste or only at the recycling stage, where what could not even be disposed of in clearance sales is finally collected. Also, industrial production cannot escape from the global trend for ever faster and ever more individual goods and services.Against this background, the success which the inkjet process has already been able to record in individual segments of industrial production is not surprising; the most prominent examples here are tiles and a few smaller textile niche sectors. Yet they are no more than a drop in the ocean. In many other industries, inkjet processes have scarcely left any impression as yet.

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Editorial

The reasons are diverse, but they can be brought down to three main difficulties: lack of speed with the existing inkjet solutions, the absolute cost, leadership of analogous processes and established supply chains.While the first problem that of lack of printing speed, can these days be considered to have been broadly solved with fast inkjet solutions, such as the Durst Rho IP engine, the other two points are considerably more difficult to solve. Indeed, if one considers the process as a whole, certain savings can be achieved relatively quickly in the consumption of raw materials and in logistics with the use of inkjet solutions, thereby in part compensating the higher unit costs. But why should a manufacturer of washing machines, who scarcely recognises printing services as being part of his company’s DNA, reorganise his processes, which have in some cases been in existence for decades, merely in order to end up with the same break-even point as before? Especially since inkjet, as a high-tech process, demands significant investments and, depending on the application, also considerable research efforts. Upgrading to inkjet technology for industrial production is therefore only really successful if the entire value creation process is put under the microscope and the technology is used strictly for what it was first invented for, which is the production of individual items in large numbers. Thanks to global data links these “series individual items” can be produced “just in time” in such a way that practically no storage costs are incurred, something is only printed when the customer orders it and, if possible, has already paid for it.

“Print on Demand” production is in a position to give considerably greater value to household equipment by making it more individual and more localised. It provides added emotional value for the purchaser in that decor and front panels can be adapted. However, it also offers quite practical advantages in that any scales, warnings and identification plates can also be produced in less common languages, thereby making them more easily understood. In the study “What Is Industrial Print” IT Strategies is proposing the term “Functional Inkjet” for this use of inkjet printing. Of course, this is not limited to white goods only but its possible uses extend to a large number of major industries, such as the automotive sector, for example.

If digital printing seizes its disruptive potential of really changing the entire value chain of a wide variety of products in a fundamental way, its use can become much more attractive for industrial companies. This is because only digital printing makes it at all possible to render the individualised series production of products enhanced by printing economically feasible.

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News

Durst Phototechnik AG exhibits a Rho IP Engine at K 2013

When the Düsseldorf Messe exhibition site opens its doors on 16 October for K 2013, the world’s premier trade fair for plastics and rubber, the Tyrol based technology company Durst Phototechnik AG will present an innovation with the potential to change the face of many industries for ever. The Durst Rho IP engine provides the flexibility of digital printing to industrial production lines.

Industry can no longer ignore the global trend for faster response and customisation. Companies are looking for creative solutions and finding them at events such as K 2013 (16–23 October 2013 in Düsseldorf). In particular, they are searching for ways of customising mass produced products and supplying them to their respective markets more quickly and with greater accuracy.

When analogue printing methods form part of the production process, the process grinds to a halt when such details as scales, special surfaces or labels need to be added. The effort involved in preparing artwork and long set-up and lead times drive up unit costs for smaller batches to levels that prove uncompetitive on the world market.

The Durst Rho IP engine was developed to make the flexibility of digital printing available to production lines for the first time, whilst delivering professional and reliable results. It offers up to eight colour channels and it can print onto a wide range of surfaces in any situation where industrial screen or pad printing is currently used. Since printing is achieved directly from a digital data file, artwork preparation costs and set-up times become a thing of the past. Single items and small series can be produced instead of or alongside larger orders. In high speed mode, the A4 standard table takes less than 30 seconds to print an item. The Rho IP 507, with up to six printheads per colour channel and a table size of 500 x 700 mm, takes less than a minute.

The innovative vacuum table has microscopic pores in the aluminium plate and provides mechanical point registration. Even small objects such as scales, membrane switches and cover plates can be printed in the highest quality with pin sharp fonts down to the smallest point sizes, whilst remaining in perfect accord with the production processes taking place before and after. In this way, new and customised premium products can be printed without causing delays to the standard range.

Durst Phototechnik AG will present the future of industrial printing at K 2013 in Düsseldorf from 16 to 23 October 2013 in Hall ENB, Stand A02.

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Installation

Bert Pieper with the company’s new Durst Rhotex 320. The printer is configured with seven inks, with light cyan, light magenta and grey accompanying the CMYK.

Right the First Time

Viabild, a high quality service provider based in Cologne, applies a motto that is simple but effective, “Right the First Time”, when producing the very finest transparency prints, whether in very short runs or bulk orders for fairs and exhibitions. Viabild’s Managing Director, Bert Pieper, has been a Durst digital print customer right from the beginning.

“Since we purchased our Rhotex 320 in February all our printing has been produced on Durst machines,” says Pieper, pointing, not without pride, to his new soft signage printer for materials up to 3.20 m wide. The Rhotex model, which is installed on Viabild’s premises in the Ossendorf district of Cologne, has a special configuration with grey as its seventh colour. As Viabild’s evidently satisfied Managing Director says: “We can now output black and white motifs onto textiles with a perfect grey balance, something we struggled to do before with any consistency. We aim to offer our customers the best possible quality at all times, with no ifs or buts.” It soon becomes clear that colour management is something very close to the heart of the MD and his dedicated team of thirty. “As long ago as 1998, when we were still operating as ‘Taimlab’ and bought our first Durst Lambda 130, we realised that a high image quality and reliable repetition of print results can only be ensured with professional colour management,” he explains. “Back then this meant some real pioneering work because in many ways the software that was available for electronic imaging was still very much in its infancy.”

The future is a challenge for everyoneIt has to be said that Viabild, which was created in 2001 following a merger with the Cologne based Bachor specialist photographic laboratory, has never been deterred by uncharted waters. At the 1998 Photokina imaging fair, the world’s longest one-piece photo was created by Taimlab on a Durst Lambda 130. The panoramic image measured no less than 60 metres in length and required the production of special rolls of photo material by Kodak, for then as it is now, the maximum standard roll was only 50 metres long. The Durst Lambda 130 was not the company’s first digital output device by any means. In the early nineties they experimented with electrostatics and the very first inkjet printers including machines from Encad (later Kodak). Viabild’s appetite for trying out new innovations has remained with it to this day. In close partnership with Durst Photechnik AG, the people in Cologne have made many a practical suggestion as to how Durst’s machines might be improved. Many of these suggestions have subsequently found their way with little changed into later printer generations. “The short, direct contact path to a supplier who literally speaks our language, was and remains an ideal scenario,” explains Viabild’s Managing Director. “In a big corporation it is often just not possible to talk to the actual product developers. With Durst on the other hand we have been able to work with the experts in Brixen and Lienz to achieve real breakthroughs in quality and reliability as well as finding small yet vital ways to make our day to day work that bit easier.”

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Installation

The finishing department is housed in a leased shop with an area of approx. 1400 m².

The prints from the Durst Rhotex 320 are fixed with a Klieverik calender.

The “model wall” can be used to mock up frames up to 3 x 6 metres using different sections.

From large format to the light boxThe first Durst inkjet printer at Viabild came soon after Bert Pieper arrived as MD in 1999, followed in 2006 by a Rho 350 with UV curable inks. According to Pieper, who heads the company together with Thomas Wegler, this put Viabild among the very first providers of transparencies on light, stretchy textile (dynajet) material. This put the company amongst the “inventors” of the modern light box made from aluminium section and textile prints with easily replaceable rubber lip finishing. This application is still one of those most in demand today, and Viabild is making every effort to ensure that its quality stands out from what many competitors are offering. For example, it creates special ICC profiles with ambient light for backlit printers, and there is even a “model wall” on which frame sizes up to 3 x 6 metres made from different sections can be mocked up. “High print quality does not mean repeat printing of a job until it finally fits; it means that if at all possible the pilot print requires no further improvements,” explains Pieper. “Everyone benefits in the end including the customer, because his processes are leaner and faster when there is no need for endless correction runs, ourselves as service providers and not least the environment, because misprints are a needless waste of materials and energy.” Customers have been able to order certified CO2 neutrally produced prints from Viabild since 2011, an option of which they still make inadequate use, much to Pieper’s regret: “The ‘green conscience’ is still too often pushed aside when it comes to cost efficiency.”

Extending the value chainBecause time and cost pressures are rising exponentially in the digital printing business, Pieper is banking on up to date machines and extending the value chain. In 2008 he replaced the Rho 350 with the Rho 320R roll to roll UV inkjet printer, and in 2009 invested in a second identical model which in 2011 was in turn superseded by the Rho 500R for print widths of up to five metres. The Rhotex 320 replaced a Mitex textile printer which was also designed for materials up to 3.20 m wide. “In the end the machine’s capacity was just not enough,” says Pieper, who has only recently significantly expanded the finishing department and has leased a 1,400 m² workshop where eleven qualified staff perform cutting, sewing and eyeing operations. There has been expansion on the sales side too, with Roland Kammler and Michael Weber recently joining the team as project manager and customer adviser. And for customers placing standard orders who do not require a lot of advice, a well stocked web shop has been operating for several years. Pieper predicts that: “The coming years are likely to see a certain market shakeout, with growing customer demands and falling margins making the business a challenge even for large format printers. Our high standards of quality, reliability and speed should help us continue to position ourselves successfully, and Durst printers are a key component of this strategy.”

www.viabild.de

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Science & Technology

Digitally printed silver inks as a component of functional layers

Fig. 1: Example of an inkjet printed circuit structure

1 Shridar, A.; Blaudeck, T.; Baumann, R. R. „Inkjet Printing as a Key Enabling Technology for Printed Electronics“, Sigma Aldrich Material Matters, 6 (1), 12, 2010.2 Nir, M. M.; Zamir, D.; Haymov, I.; Ben-Asher, L.; Cohen, O.; Faulkner, B.; de la Vega, F. „Electrically Conductive Inks for Inkjet Printing“ in: Magdassi, S. (Ed.)

„The Chemistry of Inkjet Inks“, World Scientific, 2010.3 Subramanian, V. „Printed Electronics“ in: Magdassi, S. (Ed.) „The Chemistry of Inkjet Inks“, World Scientific, 2010.4 Kirchmayer, S. „The Transition of Organic and Printed Electronics to Business”, LOPE-C, 2013.5 Hudd, A. „Inkjet Printing Technologies“ in: Magdassi, S. (Ed.) „The Chemistry of Inkjet Inks“, World Scientific, 2010.

IntroductionGreat scientific and commercial interest has been shown in the inkjet printing of conductive materials in the past few decades, with convincing arguments for the technical advantages of inkjet printing in particular, as well as a multitude of possible areas of application.The significantly lower machine procurement costs, lower maintenance costs and lower consumption of materials/ink, incurred in drop on demand printing processes increase the economic efficiency of manufacturing processes whilst offering manufacturers the prospect of maximum flexibility for the print designs of conductive layers.1

Although the original intention of researchers and developers was to fully print displays, photovoltaics, RFIDs, sensors or memories, for instance,1,2,3 hybrid solutions are now favoured due to various technical limitations for products which can be made in the short and medium term (e.g. traditional silicon chips combined with printed contacts).4

In conjunction with this, inkjet printing with silver inks (conductive layers, contacts etc.; see fig. 1) plays an important role and is regarded as a first step towards functional digitally printed layers which are fit for purpose. The aim of this article is, therefore, to outline the basic chemical concepts and sintering characteristics of selected silver inks.

Chemistry of silver inks The central component of silver inks is clearly the conductive material, which preferably consists of silver nanoparticles or organometallic preliminary steps. The carrier fluid of the ink is also important, and solvent systems based on acetates, glycols, cyclohexanone and MEK etc. are used in a multitude of ink formulations.1,2,3 To guarantee printability, rheological parameters (e.g. viscosity, surface tension and wetting behaviour etc.) and their stability in storage (sedimentation etc.) have to be optimised, whilst under certain circumstances special application specific characteristics of the ink formulation also have to be taken into account (e.g. the addition of bonding agents).5

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Science & Technology

Fig.3: Schematic diagram of the sintering process. (a) Dispersed nanoparticles in the ink carrier fluid, (b) vaporizing the solvent with heat, (c) evaporating the other ink additives and (d) sintering the nanoparticles with growth (from ref. [1]).

Fig. 2: The percentage of silver in various commercial silver inks is between 20% and 50% by weight.

6 Alternative procedures are, for instance, chemical sintering or microwave sintering. However, as these are only infrequently used, they will not be explicitly

explained here.

Various commercial manufacturers have succeeded over the past few years in developing suitable ink formulations which are fit for purpose and suitable for various printhead technologies. These inks have good conductivity after the sintering process, which raises the possibility that they can be used on a large scale, for instance in contact printing. The high cost of ink should, however, still be regarded as a critical factor, this is the result of the necessary percentage of silver in the inks (see fig. 2) and current silver prices.

Dry and sintering process The conductivity of printed layers is determined primarily by the conductive material in the ink. However, because during the printing process, the ink carrier fluid and viscosity regulator etc. are separated out, these have to be removed in a subsequent dry phase. If these are silver nanoparticles, more intensive thermal treatment is necessary, so that the nanoparticles can be welded together (“sintered”) in addition to drying the ink layer (see fig. 3). This sintering phase is carried out either thermally or photonically on a large scale,6 and is certainly essential for a correspondingly large final conductivity value.

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Science & Technology

Fig. 4: Commercially available silver inks with different particle sizes: left approx. 50 nm, right 5-10 nm.

Fig. 5: Effect of “melting point depression” on nanoparticles (from ref. [7]).

7 Saad Ahmed, Xenon, Low temperature photonic sintering for printed electronics, Semicon West, 2011.8 For example, for a printing speed of 1 m/s and a sintering period of 15 min., a kiln section over 900 m long would be required, which would itself mean an

enormously large spatial requirement with a meandering guideway.

The sintering step is extremely dependent on the process conditions, a fact which must be taken into account, i.e. in addition to the sinter profile, the time and particle sizes (see fig. 4), particle forms and the thicknesses of the printed layers etc. can also have an influence. In principle, the greater the size of the initial particle, the more energy must be transferred into the printed layer during the sintering process. This goes back to the “melting point depression” effect,7 which simply means that the melting point of nanoparticles decreases significantly with reduced particle size (see fig. 5). This effect plays a significant role, particularly for particles with diameters below 50 nm.

For a successful printing and sintering process, the optimum balance of ink, substrate and sintering method is therefore an important basic condition. Although thermal sintering is a reliable process which is tried and tested, this method has two distinct disadvantages. Firstly, temperatures of 150°C and above are necessary to achieve the desired conductivity values, and this exceeds the thermal load capacity of many synthetic substrates. Secondly, several minutes up to one hour must be allowed for the sintering process, which is not compatible with many roll to roll processes, during which belts are run at very high speeds.8

For temperature sensitive substrates or high sintering rates, pulsed xenon radiation or near-infrared (NIR) lamps are therefore used by preference. The first uses very short xenon pulses which heat the silver layer up to as much as 1000°C. Because of the shortness of the pulse and the pauses between the pulses, the silver layer can be cooled again to temperatures below 100°C within milliseconds, which prevents damage to the substrate. However, the disadvantages of this method lie in the extremely sensitive processing and high procurement costs for the sintering systems.

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Science & Technology

Fig. 6: NIR sintering with various parameters. Left: lighting too high, right: correct intensity and duration of lighting

NIR systems represent a substantially cheaper alternative, using lamps whose radiation is better absorbed by the silver particles than by most synthetic materials. They can therefore also be used for efficient sintering processes, although consideration must be given to the fact that layers printed in continuous operation are heated to higher temperatures and the substrates below them can be damaged. Co-ordinating the emitter output and the duration of exposure is therefore of fundamental importance, and negative sintering effects can be thereby avoided (see fig. 6).

SummaryInkjet printing with silver inks represents an interesting alternative for the production of functional layers. Simple contact printing processes will, in particular, find their way into products suitable for their use (e.g. membrane keyboards). In the short to medium term, not only the inks and their printability, but also sintering procedures with optimally co-ordinated conditions, will be seen as important parts of the process of manufacturing functional layers.

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Media & Handling

MacDermid Autotype’s Autotex® Softouch™ printed with Rho IP

Membrane switch overlays printed on a Rho IP

MacDermid Autotype is a world leading industrial manufacturer of coated films and blended liquids for use in the printing, automotive and electronics industries with their base in the UK. The product range includes among others: overlay films for membrane touch switches, stencil products and graphic films. Founded in 1868 the name of the company points to the literal dictionary definition of Autotype: ‚autotype, a photographic process, an exact copy, a facsimile‘ and still today over 140 years later the products produce prints that are as close as possible to the original design. No better match to this company cultur than Durst’s Rho IP, a purpose built industrial printer for screen and pad printing applications that was used to test the Autotex® Softouch™ film.

The product is a specially textured PET film, offering a tactile, soft-to-touch finish.The surface has been developed to deliver a very fine, flat matt finish which in combination with new coating chemistry produces a unique soft-to-touch feel to satisfy today’s everchanging design concepts. This has been achieved whilst maintaining formability, flexibility, chemical and abrasion resistance and minimizing dust contamination.

Autotex® Softouch™ has an ink adhesion primer on the second surface. The primer confers excellent adhesion to inks. A protective laminate is applied to the primer surface and should be removed beforeprinting.The film is suitable for parts that require embossing or have a shallow formed design. In common with most other plastics, Autotex® Softouch™ has limited long term resistance to UV light and therefore is not recommended for long term use outdoors. Some of the outstanding properties are listed below.

Properties Test Method

Surface resistivity >1015 W/sq 500 Vdc ASTM D257 @ 23 °C/50 % RH

Volume resistivity 1015 Wm 500 Vdc ASTM D257 @ 23 °C/50 % RH/60s

Elongation at break 90-120 % ASTM D882

Switch life 5 million MacDermid Autotype Methode

Tensile strength at break 150-200 N/mm ASTM D882

Relative density 1.40 g/cm3 ASTM D1505

Pencil hardness B MacDermid Autotype Methode

UV absorption 1.75–1.85 MacDermid Autotype Methode

Yellowness index <3.0 ASTM D1925

Total luminous transmission 92 ±2 % ASTM D1003

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Media & Handling

Autotex® Softouch™ is used as a substrate among a wide range of applications as eg.:

The sharp and precise 1000 DPI print image of the Rho IP print engine and the Rho Premium Wide Gamut ink render an extraordinary product for individualised mass production, eg. products for luxury cars with individual serial numbers, or short run length orders.

Membrane switch overlays Fascia panels Labels/Product marking

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Application

“Looks matter”

Joked Edwin Lingg, Managing Director of Li &Co AG. His company has been making cork and linoleum finished floorings since 1989 and his brother Alfred joined him in the business in 2007. Since then corkboards have also been digitally processed at the company’s base at Müstair in Switzerland.

“Cork is highly regarded as a flooring and many people are attracted by the feel of the material and the flexible sensation under foot. Cork also assists with indoor temperature control; its powerful insulating effect keeps warmth in during the winter and heat out during the summer. As a fast growing raw material, cork is also more environmentally friendly than many other alternative floors. In spite of this, most people prefer floorings made of natural materials, such as wood or stone, to a cork floor with a natural finish. However, inner qualities aren’t everything,” explained Mr Lingg and smiles.He must know because his company offers just under 80 decorative versions of corkboards with natural finishes. In addition, along with his workforce, which now numbers 70, he also uses the raw cork supplied to produce genuine linoleum (which is incidentally also made from cork, or more precisely, cork powder). As well as the cork-linoleum combination of Corkstone, various other product lines are produced which are made of vinyl, woven vinyl fabric, leather and natural slate. When the skilled machine fitter came across the production of floorings in the late eighties “quite by chance”, he recalls, he set to work on major changes to the market with the unbiased view of a newcomer to the profession. This was made possible because of the click system where the floor panels, which are usually offered in a 900 x 300 mm format, can be laid particularly efficiently and precisely. They are offered for sale at specialist retail outlets, as well as via the relevant trades, and they are laid in almost equal proportions in private houses and commercial properties. In addition, the company also offers materials in sheets.

From the left: the brothers Edwin and Alfred Lingg have been running Li &Co AG together since 2007.

A workforce of around 70 makes floorings out of cork and other materials at Müstair in Switzerland.

The corkboards are supplied as raw materials, pre-treated with a coat of coloured primer for digital printing and protected from abrasion and light with varnish. The standard format of the floor panels is 900 x 300 mm and they can be laid particularly accurately and efficiently as a click system.

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Application

One square metre of Printcork costs about 40 euros and is therefore on a par with a reasonably priced parquet floor. However, for the same price the prints can give the impression of the finest, high quality, tropical wood or expensive parquet flooring, which normally costs a whole lot more.

From 2005 onwards, Mr Lingg had been searching for possible ways to print corkboards. Initially, he looked at analogue processes, then digital ones as well. He eventually found Durst Phototechnik AG, which he then realised he had known from a very early age when he had gone to school for two years in Brixen near to the administrative centre. “First of all we worked with a Rho 600 Rapid UV board printer,” remembers Mr Lingg. “At the start, this really was only capable of produced around 60 to 70 m² an hour.” Matching the industrial 24/7 process with digital printing required considerable patience and effort, but it eventually led to success. There are now two Rho 750 UV printers for board materials up to two metres in width producing around 2,500 m2 per day and the size of the workforce has more than doubled since the introduction of digital printing. “Our decorative wood patterns are the most popular, making up almost three quarters of the total,” explained Mr Lingg. “Natural stone patterns account for around 20 percent and the rest are so-called ‘fantasy’ finishes, from the ‘Hello Kitty’ brand, via cobblestones, through to alpine meadow hay. For reasons of data efficiency, pattern repeats are created, although these are not really necessary with digital printing. However, these are significantly larger scale than with conventional processes,” states Mr Lingg. “Essentially, the 17th module looks the same as the first. The UV curing inks are again varnished after printing to protect them from abrasion and solar radiation and they then achieve a lightfastness of 7-8 on the blue wool scale which is more than untreated cork floors.” “Of course, we can also print customer specific patterns, if necessary, from a quantity of one, upwards. Only an additional fixed set-up fee of 200 euros is then payable. Companies particularly use this service for important presentation areas. Branches of the L’Oréal subsidiary Bodyshop and the Christ jewellery chain are fitted with the Printcork floors, and soon, who knows, even Starbucks’ coffee shops. The new trend for sustainability makes it possible. Inner qualities do count.” “Deciding on the Printcork line was just the right thing to do,” says Edwin Lingg, who is not only just impressed by the fact that turnover in the series has increased by at least 20 percent every year since its introduction, but also because over recent years a handful of competitors have emerged. Fortunately, he is pleased to say: “That shows us we’re on the right track.”

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