Honeycomb Sandwich Panels

Transcription

1 1 Honeycomb Sandwich Panels for printing, for furniture, for display Exhibits of Honeycomb Material at Graphispag 2011 Print Expo, Barcelona Nicholas Hellmuth with Silvia Herrera

2 2 Introduction Honeycomb sandwich material was a major attraction in a many booths at Graphispag expo in Barcelona, The Durst booth had an entire table-and-chairs area in one corner. One day I needed a place to type up my notes, so I sat here for a few hours. Every few minutes people came by to look at the honeycomb furniture. They touched it; they wanted to ask questions (but this was a back corner of the booth, there was no one from the material manufacturer present). Durst booth, you can see how beautiful Honeycomb applications can be with creative and good designers.

3 3 Here are some chairs printed by Durst at one of their UV printers and cut with an Esko Kongsberg XY cutter.

4 4 Same at every other booth that exhibited honeycomb material: such as the BeDigital booth. Most of the people walking down the aisle stopped to look. Here there were two representatives from the manufacturer, Pregis. There was a constant stream of print shop owners and managers visiting this booth. Every time we walk around bedigital booth, we observe people attracted by the Honeycomb samples they exhibited.

5 5 Falconboard display inside BeDigital booth. Really nice shapes for the mascots; after a while the cute little figures on top tended to disappear. People were tempted to take the mascots with them.

6 6 Increasingly for our trade show coverage around the world, we at FLAAR Reports try to have one separate report on inks, a separate report on media, a separate report on other major exhibits at an expo. But there were not enough ink booths and not enough media booths at Graphispag to warrant separate reports on those topics. So we have a main dedicated report that lists all UV printers (same report also serves as general introduction and lists flatbed cutters, water-based printers, and solvent printers). There is a separate dedicated report on textile printers at Graphispag. And there were enough exhibits of honeycomb sandwich material to warrant the present special report on honeycomb material. This report is provided to our readers as a free download as an expression of our interest in providing knowledge of this interesting material to the world. I am interested in honeycomb sandwich board because I can visualize using it for museum displays and architectural uses. My background as an archaeologist brings up a dozen fascinating projects I would enjoy doing for museums with this material, such as reconstructing the giant sacred trees of the Maya and Aztec as three-dimensional models. I saw such a huge rendering of a large tree at JapanShop 2010 expo last year. I can also envision cut-outs of historical (archaeological) figures, enlarged to human life size and printed in full color on honeycomb material (to give them at least some mass) and then cut out with a flatbed cutter (Kongsberg, Zund, Cielle, etc). I studied architecture at Harvard before switching to archaeology but even today I still work with architectural projects, probably because my father, grandfather, great uncle, and two brothers are all architects. I can visualize the interior decoration that can be achieved with honeycomb sandwich material. And then there is furniture, also part of architecture. You can make tables, chairs, bookshelves out of honeycomb sandwich material. You can also make temporary emergency shelters (as long as there is not too much rain!). So for all the above reasons, I have a long-range personal interest in any material (or printer, or flatbed cutter) that can contribute to architecture or museum displays. Obviously signage and graphic display are other growing markets for honeycomb panel as well. Glossary of jargon on honeycomb sandwich boards I use the generic term honeycomb sandwich panel or honeycomb sandwich board. Actually not all the structure is a hexagonal shape: some is horizontal rather than vertical. Not many core shapes are round (I have not photographed or studied beehive honeycomb, so I will have to do more studies of the natural pattern created by bees). With the panels made today the top surface and bottom surface add to the structure. In the future I wish to do more analysis and comparison. But for now, in order to get this basic report out on Graphispag, I will simply list each brand that was present at the expo in Barcelona.

7 7 Close up of one kind of structures of what we named Honeycomb sanwish panels. Future reports will list and discuss all brands, at least the major brands (since not all brands were exhibited at Graphispag). I will, however, tend to limit the discussion to honeycomb material made with Kraft paper. There are dozens of other materials used by other manufacturers: aluminum, carbon fiber, polypropylene, polycarbonate, PVC foam are only a few. Not all are sandwiched between a flat covering for top and bottom. Some are simply hollow. Most of these are used for construction: in airplanes, transport vehicles, building construction. I prefer to limit my coverage in the beginning to the Kraft paper materials and specifically the ones with a printable surface at least on one side (actually you can print on the Kraft surface if you wish, but most of the boards made for graphic display have one or both surfaces a nice white color).

8 8 Honeycomb sandwich boards at Graphispag Be aware that the shape of the structure of the material impacts whether the material is acceptable for furniture, or only as a display panel or backing for a printed display. If you are going to sit on a chair (or stand on it) then the material needs to be strong enough to take the weight of a person. At most exhibits I have noticed that some stools with slender legs had bent legs. You can easily fall and potentially hurt yourself if you sit on a chair whose structure is not sturdy enough to hold your weight. A chair with a solid base is potentially more stable. A further consideration is the design of the structure of the chair. Be sure the design results in a sturdy item of furniture. There were three kinds of display of honeycomb sandwich material at the expo: Incidental display as furniture, with no sales rep present Booth of official distributor with sales rep and/or manager present Booth of the actual manufacturer Incidental displays could be seen in the following booths. I noticed only the ones that had enough honeycomb material to allow it to catch my eye. Other booths may also have had smaller amounts of honeycomb material, but in a busy expo I might not see 100%. I list only booths in Hall 2; I did not have time to enter the offset printer hall 3. HP had honeycomb stools in their greenhouse lecture room.

9 9 As we mentioned, you can see how this material can resist the weigh of the people with a good design of chairs for example. Durst had one entire corner of their booth with honeycomb chairs.

10 10 At least two other booths had honeycomb furniture such as ReBoard in booth of media flex: table, chair, art. Stora Enso had Reboard furniture in their booth. Stona Enso booth at Graphispag 2011.

11 11 Of the booths of official distributor with personnel present, the most noticeable one was BeDigital had an exhibit featuring Falconboard from Pregis. BeDigital booth at Graphispag 2011.

12 12 Ability (sic) is a printing company, not a distributor. They list Re-board Here is the booth of Ability one of the nicest booth we observed at Graphispag.

13 13

14 14 There was X-board from Xanita elsewhere, but it is confusing whether Xanita is a manufacturer, or more likely a master distributor. I estimate they are a master distributor. Here are some Xanita media samples at POLYNORMA booth.

15 15 These are some samples of some applications with Xanita. Some other examples of applications with Xanita at Inter Sign boot.

16 16 For booths of actual manufacturer, this of course is unlikely if the manufacturer is from outside Spain. So it is logical that the Spanish manufacturer Hexapanel, brand name of GRUDEM, Segovia, Spain had their own exhibit since this is a Spanish company. At an Italian expo you would expect to see the Italian company that makes comparable material there. In Asia you see the Chinese companies, etc. Normally at international expos you see only three to five brands. The smaller companies from individual countries do not tend to exhibit outside their own country.

17 17 Samples exhibited at GRUDEM booth, Graphispag 2011.

18 18 Price comparisons for honeycomb sandwich material Price varies by country and by the amount that you purchase. So it is more realistic if you obtain the price from your local dealer. Since the FLAAR Reports are read in more than 82 countries around the world we would unlike know the price of all brands in your country. Summary: Major Brands of honeycomb sandwich boads at Gaphispag The following brands had the largest exhibit or their material in several locations. There were no Chinese honeycomb sandwich board exhibits here in Spain. Falconboard, trademark name of material from Pregis. Falconboard Print comes in 6 mm, 10 mm, and 18 mm thicknesses. Core structure of the 18 mm material seems different (more vertical) than the more horizontal structure of the 6 mm and 10 mm material. You get either a white surface (for printing) or a natural surface for mounting. Parent company is Pregis. Hexacomb is the business unit that makes Falconboad. Hexapanel, brand name of GRUDEM, Segovia, Spain Reboard is spelled many different ways on the Internet: Re-board, ReBoard, etc. But the company itself (Design Force AB) spells it Re-board. Design Force provided hospitality at their headquarters in Sweden to one of the Technical Writers of FLAAR, but I myself have not been there and so have not visited their factory or demo room. Remember, you will need a flatbed cutter to cut this material A Kongsberg, Zund, Cielle, Aristo, AXYZ, or MultiCam flatbed cutter is needed to cut this material. Some of these flatbed cutters can potentially do a better or faster or less strained job cutting honeycomb material than others. All brands can cut, but some cut one material better than another material. Some tools leave less rough edges. Some brands and shapes of honeycomb cells result in cleaner cut edges. Do not assume that every material cuts nicely. And of one brand, often that brand makes several different kinds of material: some may cut more cleanly than other thicknesses or core structure.

19 19 Notice that Esko, had a booth made with these materials, with interesting shapes made with their cutters.

20 20 Cielle at FRAMUN cutting some samples, at the botton photo Nicholas showing one of the samples they showed at the trade show.

21 21 If you want to put an edge on the cut panel If you wish to put an edge on the cut honeycomb panel Drytac makes such an edge-application machine. Sample showed at FESPA Munich 2010 of Re-board with an edge at Drytac booth. CAD designs are provided by the honeycomb source or cutter source You will need CAD designs for furniture; these you can easily acquire from the company that provides either the honeycomb sandwich material or from the cutter manufacturer.

22 22 Honeycomb sandwich boards as eco-friendly green material Nowadays anything that is not PVC is considered at least more green than PVC. Since most honeycomb panels includes recycled material or can itself be recycled to some degree, these boards are considered eco-friendly and green. Conclusions There is clearly a huge and growing market for honeycomb sandwich boards in Europe. There is presently more interest in Europe: VISCOM Paris, for example, had handsome exhibits of honeycomb material in In the future the interest level will also grow in America, especially as FLAAR Reports writes about this material (since over 65% of our readers are in North America). Presently the world market share is predominantly held by the major brand names from Europe and USA. It will take skillful marketing for Chinese brands to gain market share. But since the market is large, and clearly growing, there is obvious potential for those Chinese brands who are clever with how they get their message out to print shop owners and managers in North America and Europe (and Latin America, Africa, and Middle East). First posted the last week of March, 2011, a week after Graphispag. As we have a chance to visit more of the factories and demo rooms of the manufacturers or master distributors, we will provide additional FLAAR Reports on honeycomb sandwich board.

23 23 Inventory of internal structure of the honeycomb concept, of the brands exhibited at Graphispag 2011, Barcelona Honeycomb exhibited at Durst booth. Re-board exhibited at Esko artwork booth. Hexapanel exhibited at GRUDEM booth.

24 24 Honeycomb exhibited at MediaFlex booth. Honeycomb exhibited at StoraEnso booth. Hexacomb exhibited at bedigital booth.