System Ceramics R&D Decoration team

Luciano Bastardi and Paolo Casarini present System Ceramics’ R&D Decoration team

Behind great technologies there are always great research and development teams which, thanks to their expertise, transform ideas into something concrete. We entered the R&D Decoration department and asked Luciano Bastardi (Engineering Manager) and Paolo Casarini (Product Supervisor) to tell us about their work behind the scenes and to present to us the team that worked on Creadigit Infinity.

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What were the main inputs that allowed the R&D team to develop a machine such as Infinity?
 

The stimuli were many and came from various sources, both internal and external. First of all, it’s necessary to point out that in the field of digital decoration, System Ceramics has always stood out for the excellence of its technologies and has always sought to anticipate the needs of the market. Our
idea of digital decoration has evolved over the years in the continuous search for new directions to take.

We felt the need to overcome our limits, arriving at the idea of using our know-how to create something new, which rewrote the rules of the game.

The other input was external, and, therefore, the market. The increasingly insistent request from our customers of better performances, on the one hand, and the digital decoration market moving towards computerized digitization on the other hand, led us to undertake this new path called Infinity. In essence, therefore, the inputs were both top-down and bottom-up, and we are proud to have succeeded in putting them together and arriving at this result.

How is the R&D team structured? How many minds and skills are needed to obtain such an avant-garde result like Infinity?
 

Behind such a complex project are working groups made up of people and years of research and sacrifice so that everything can go in the right direction. The research and development team that worked on the creation of the Creadigit Infinity is composed of highly qualified professionals, with rare skills, not only for the ceramics sector. This group has a cross-discipline background and puts together experts in physics, electronics, IT, chemistry, fluid dynamics and many other specializations. It’s important that all these people work in harmony and in unison. 

What happens in the digital printing process is something unique, which doesn’t occur in any other phase inside a line. The actual result takes form and is visible only when the drop lies on the ceramic surface and is not reversible.
To approach perfection, the entire team must necessarily work in synergy and, most of all, have an open mind to learn the secrets of the other surrounding areas of expertise. It’s never been so true that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

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To conclude, can you describe Infinity through 3 key concepts?
 

Infinity is the fruit of years of study and research; it’s the combination of numerous concepts and ideas that have followed one another over time, finding application in a project like this one. 
It’s not easy to choose only 3 to describe what Infinity is, because it’s a choral work; every single characteristic is fundamental and links to the others. An acceptable summary that embraces the main features of the machine can be made with these three key concepts.

Creadigit Infinity is projected towards the future. We often say this, and it’s a concept we want to emphasize: it’s a technology open to every scenario of future development, able to permit thinking ahead. It’s a starting point towards new developments guaranteed by an advanced software base and a computing power able to support the next IT evolutions. Our engineers will develop new and complex algorithms able to improve the digital printing process. Infinity can, without any doubt, incorporate any future upgrade. It’s a guaranteed investment.

Creadigit Infinity is flexibility. From a technical point of view, it can boast different characteristics of flexibility. To mention one, the multi-head concept which makes it possible to develop a wide variety of products and make digital printing extremely effective.
 
Creadigit Infinity is user-friendly. A feature which has been widely appreciated over the years is the simplicity of use for the line technician. In terms of ease of use of the machine, albeit equipped with numerous functions and a complex IT architecture, is has a simple, intuitive and easy-to-learn interface. In this way, it’s possible to intervene on the printing process directly from the machine immediately, without having to stop the production process.
In System Ceramics, we talk about LIP (Live Image Processing): the technician can verify and if necessary balance the print tone and monitor the status of the process in real time, all directly on the machine.
The effort required for managing the printing process is decidedly reduced and more immediate. A line technician can certainly operate more simply and promptly.

With Luciano Bastardi and Paolo Casarini we then went into more detail about describing Creadigit Infinity. In the second part of the interview they will explain Infinity’s advantages and describe some aspects of the ceramics market, from the world of digital decoration to full digital.

Visit the web page dedicated to Creadigit Infinity.

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