By Cassandra Balentine
Part 3 of 3
European-based Classen is a leading supplier of laminate and PVC-free designer flooring. The company recently celebrated its tenth anniversary of digital décor printing on flooring last year. It continues to find success with the adoption of digital print technologies for flooring production.
More than a decade ago, Classen adopted single-pass JUPITER technology from Hymmen, today it operates five digital printing lines to produce laminate flooring. Getting here was a journey of assessing the market, overcoming challenges, and investing in future technologies.
When it first investigated the potential for digital technologies in flooring production, Classen reports that customers were showing the need to design their own furnishings and floors, but its existing set up did not properly meet these needs.
Digital Innovators
The staff at Classen had been watching the market, especially trends towards customization and personalization. Until this point, décor paper was purchased from external providers and laminated onto the core board. The minimum purchase for this was often as high as 20,000 square meters of flooring. More frequently, customers wanted to purchase high-quality, exclusive flooring options in quantities less than 500 square meters.
To accommodate this trend, digital printing technologies for décor specialties were already hitting the market from Hymmen.
“We at Classen had the idea to enter digital printing and print certain décors for laminate floors ourselves,” recalls Daniel Schwach, head of pre-coating and digital printing division, Classen. “On the one hand we wanted to constantly improve and be the innovation leader in our field. On the other hand, we wanted to respond even better to our customers’ wishes for smaller batch sizes, exclusivity, décor variety, and flexibility.
The partnership between Hymmen and Classen began here. The primary goal was to improve cost effectiveness on short-run work. Classen found this with Hymmen printers, which were able to produce great print quality at high processing speed in widths of up to 2,100 millimeters (mm).
In 2013 Classen adopted its first digital print line, the Hymmen Jupiter-C 2100, which included 120 printheads, four colors, and a high-precision transport system for printing on plates with a feed system of 25 meters per minutes.
Digital Processing
For Classen’s Baruth, Germany facility, the production process for digitally printing flooring begins with a print base paper laminated onto 5.35 square meter high-density fiberboard carrier boards. From here, Classen’s own décor is printed on top in a single pass using the digital single-pass printing process. To further protect and shape the surface, a single-pass liquid resin is applied in several stages.
Classen also uses a liquid laminate technology process, which was developed in house.
The board is then fed through a double belt or short cycle press, where corresponding all over or synchronous structures are placed on the surface. On the press, with a total length of 45 meters, plates with a maximum width of 2,040 mm can be digitally printed. With a production speed of 25 meters per minute, they can achieve production output of up to 50,000 square meters in 24 hours.
“With digital printing we can realize exclusive designs according to customer wishes from a batch size of 500 square meters. Designs and variations that were not possible before can now be printed on a laminate plank. The set up times on the presses are so short that we can also produce repeat orders with shorter notice,” adds Schwach.
By the end of 2014, the production team at Classen’s Baruth facility had the digital printer and finishing under control and decided to install a second digital printer in 2015. After only two weeks it went up to a four-shift operation.
It also invested in the technology for its Kaisersesch, Germany site, where it now produces PVC-free CERAMIN wall and floor coverings digitally.
In total, Classen has five digital printing lines installed over several facilities. The company found success as an early investor in digital print for industrial flooring applications.
Oct2023, Industrial Print Magazine