Hymmen presents high-end technology for digital printing on edge-banding material
28 Jun 2017 11:42

Almost everybody had to do it once: applying an edge belt to a furniture part with an iron. Or you were happy about not having to do it yourself because you bought a worktop with a high-quality edge. In both cases, it is not necessary to come to a compromise with regard to optics: Thanks to digital printing, each decor request for surface and edge can be realized in high-end quality.


As a machine- and plant-engineering company with focus on the woodworking industry, Hymmen has an extensive know-how about the complete production procedures of their customers. Due to the close interaction with the customers of the furniture and kitchen industry, Hymmen realized a special field of application for their industrial digital printing technology for which there had been no solution on the market so far: The industrial digital printing on edge belts.


The substitution of gravure printing by digital printing provides many advantages to the customers: digital printing can be incorporated in existing process chains of the decor industry, it enables an individualized mass production, the quick reaction to market trends and customer requests, a shorter "Time to Market", short set-up times, lower storage costs, no material loss upon change of decor, and new design options with regard to register lengths and levels of detail. The whole line has a very compact design. The company succeeded in accommodating the whole technology on a minimum amount of space, without having to renounce the advantages of large digital lines like the automatic cleaning of print heads.


The digital printing line JPT-WS is available in two production widths: 230 and 560mm, with a differentiation between the variants online and offline. Both types are available for integration within an existing edge band production line, with extruder and liquid coating machines.


Printing takes place on a single track, borderless over the whole edge band at a maximum effective printing width of 205mm resp. 410mm. In case of the inline variant, the primer, basic lacquer and, if required, the texture are applied on the edge belt. The digital printing is followed by the coating lacquer and profiling, as far as this was not carried out before. At the end of production, the edge band is wound up on rolls and supplied to the end customer. These lines can also be installed offline as independent printing machines.


In addition to the high precision conveyor, which ensures the flatness of the substrate by means of the vacuum suction, the digital printing machine for edge bands offers further technical highlights. The modular width extension implies flexibility with regard to the printing widths. The self-recovery function ensures very high line availability. Calenders within the Hymmen line enable a decoupling of the web tension within the digital printer from the web tension in the periphery. The grey scale technology ensures a print image in reliable and uniform high-definition quality up to the border of the edge, while the color management is easy to handle at the same time. Maximum 10 color rows with 6 print heads side by side, i.e. 60 print heads altogether, can be installed. The UV colors CMYK (twice) and two special colors (e.g. white) are used. Finally, an UV-LED drying technology is used.


The result: The Hymmen digital printing technology offers an amazing optical deep structure of each possible edge decor, where applicable also with textured haptics, which can hardly be distinguished from genuine wood, high decor quality like the surface, reproducible at any time, and all in a highly flexible and economic production process.

Prepared on the basis of InPrint Industrial Print Blog