Printing Machines

Printing machines are designed to print decorative patterns on flat surfaces. The most common printed patterns are wood grain and marble. These images can be printed on natural wood to help enhance the grain pattern or on MDF to make it look like natural wood or marble. The most common use for the MDF printing process is in the flooring industry to compete with “high pressure laminate”.

Barberan manufactures two types of printing machines. Contact printers and non-contact digital printing machines. The contact printers available are rotogravure and flexo graphic types. The Rotogravure printers use engraved metal cylinders to transfer the image to a rubber application roller that in turn applies the pattern to the flat panel. The Flexo graphic printing machines are similar except they use changeable “plates” that are mounted to a cylinder.

The non-contact digital printing machines function very similar to your office printer. You can download an image and the high speed ink jet print heads in the printing machine will print that pattern onto the panel without touching it.