Concord Flooring, in Corona, California, has become one of the first companies in the world to adopt EFI Cubik with Mineral Inks, a single-pass inkjet solution for printing on wood.
Available in 70cm and140cm printing widths, the system is capable of decorating and staining boards and planks up to 12cm thick, and is available with optional vacuum transport, printing up to 50 linear m/min.
Concord Flooring is the largest engineered hardwood flooring manufacturer on the US west coast. It began operations designed around EFI Cubik capabilities with an all-digital and fully automated workflow for decorating wood for flooring and other purposes. “In the wood industry, there are two things that most manufacturers have problems with - it is difficult to maintain colour consistency, and there is too much downtime with the analogue processes they are using. Our factory has addressed both of these issues,” said Sylvia Bulanek, Concord Flooring’s marketing director.
“The EFI Cubik, with its Fiery digital front end, is able to automatically adjust colour based on specifications, taking into account the colour of the wood, which being a natural product, varies from tree to tree. Also, this automated colour management enables us to switch colours quickly as we move from project to project.”
At Concord Flooring, the wood exits the EFI Cubik ready for post-processing and shipping, accomplished with a series of finishing stations connected via conveyors. There is no waste and no downtime between job lots. In addition, the automated factory requires very few employees, making it easier to deliver a high-quality product at a competitive price. The full capacity of the factory is 7432m2 per day.