Cerlat, part of Group Mijares since 1994, is a high-end ceramic tile manufacturer located in Onda, near Castellón, Spain. The company’s expertise is premium wall and floor tiles with stone, wood, marble and cement designs encompassing some beautiful special effects for added appeal to its worldwide customer base. Therefore achieving a high print quality whilst ensuring cost effective and reliable production is critical to Cerlat’s success.
For some years, Cerlat, a loyal KERAjet customer, has been running their printers either with the original Xaar 1001 or the more recent Xaar 1002 printheads. With a structured and proactive maintenance procedure in place, the company has been able to run Xaar’s printheads for many years. For example, the original Xaar 1001 printheads which came with the first digital machine are still in use 9 years later and not one printhead has been replaced.
Towards the end of 2016 Cerlat decided to install new tile decoration equipment. Given the reliability of the KERAjet printers and Xaar printheads experienced over the years, without hesitation Jorge Albalet selected a KERAjet 700 machine with the new Xaar 2001+ printheads.
Installation was quick – the new printer was up and running within a week and since January 2017 has printed well over 120,000 tiles at a line speed of 30m/minute.
“I am delighted with the new KERAjet machine and the Xaar 2001+ printheads” says Jorge. “Thanks to the productivity and versatility of the Xaar 2001+, we’ve been able to configure a machine that meets our exact requirements. We have multiple bars for the most critical colours for our tile designs ‒ brown and blue ‒ and single bars for the other colours.”
The machine is currently running with the Xaar 2001+ GS12C, with a plan to add the Xaar 2001+ GS40C in an additional bar for printing gloss and other effects.
“We’ve been very happy with the Xaar 1001 and Xaar 1002 printheads for many years, but the new Xaar 2001+ printheads have increased productivity dramatically. The printheads are performing very reliably both in single and dual colour mode, and print quality is excellent,” concludes Jorge.
The Xaar 2001+ family of printheads ensures ultimate design versatility and production flexibility for tile manufacturers. Thanks to its 2000 nozzles, the Xaar 2001+ delivers high productivity and fast line speed – at 35 m/min line speed, the Xaar 2001+ GS12C can deliver up to 30 g/m2 at a resolution of 360×480 dpi, making it ideal for both decoration and light effects. Other variants ‒ the GS6C for fine details for wall tiles, and the GS40C, delivering up to 80 g/m2 for intense effects ‒ are also available.
Additionally, just as chosen by Cerlat, the Xaar 2001+ can be configured in dual colour mode in some print bars and single colour mode for other print bars – this provides a compact, economic option for producing a range of tile designs