Globe News
Kember Flooring to install North America’s first EFI Cubik S700

Electronics For Imaging (EFI) will deliver the first EFI Cubik S700 industrial single-pass digital inkjet printer in North America to Mono, Ontario-based flooring manufacturer Kember Kreative Interiors in early 2020.

The company purchased the printer for its Kember Flooring subsidiary in Michigan, where it will launch a research and development initiative that is expected to improve efficiencies and relieve existing production burdens.

The Cubik S700 will use mineral ink for single-pass wood staining, resulting in better integration with the wood, EFI explains.

“The idea is to use the Cubik printer to replace our existing analogue staining method,” said Peter Kember, Owner and Managing Director of Kember Kreative Interiors. “One of the challenges we face today is to achieve a consistent colour at the end of our production lines when using varying batches of substrates. Currently, we need to adjust stain formulas to compensate for the differences, which can take hours to perfect. The Cubik will enable us to classify each flooring plank – inline – and select the formula to achieve the desired end colour.”

Kember Flooring’s Cubik S700 – the company’s first EFI product – is expected to save the company time, as it will no longer have to sort the substrates it prints based on underlying wood colour before the printing process. The printer will instead automatically adapt the stain based on each piece. The Cubik S700 will also provide the company a warehousing advantage, as it will not have to store as much product in order to ensure colour consistency for large-scale orders.

“We explored similar software from another company, but when we looked at the integration of the Cubik with the Fiery software, it was exactly what we needed,” said Kember. “The combination of colour management and ability to create and save profiles for different substrates was unique to EFI’s solutions.”

Kember Flooring’s long-term digital plans involve using multiple Cubik printers at its U.S. production facilities, and Kember says the company hopes to expand the technology to its facilities in Europe as well.

“We are thrilled to work with Kember Flooring to install the first Cubik S700 in North America,” said José Luis Ramón Moreno, Vice President and General Manager, EFI Industrial Printing. “This is Kember’s first EFI purchase, and we are excited to see how it will revolutionize their production.”

The S700 is part of a series of printers available in different widths, including EFI Cubik S1400 and S1800 models, that deliver sustainable results using mineral and UV LED inks for different wood applications.