Digital 3D Wood Texture: UV-Curable Inkjet Printing on Board Surface

Ruijuan Sang,Zhihui Wu,Xinhao Feng,Adam John Manley

doi:10.3390/coatings10121144

Ruijuan Sang, Zhihui Wu + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings10121144

Copy DOI

Journal: Coatings	Publication Date: Nov 24, 2020
Citations: 16	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Nanjing Forestry University, San Diego State University

Abstract

Natural wood textures are appreciated in most forest products industries for their appealing visual characteristics including grain and color, but also their fine surface tactile sensation. The following presents an ultraviolet (UV)-curable inkjet technology printing 3D wood texture on wood-based substrate by image processing and surface treatment. The UV printing was created from scanned digital images of a real wood surface and processed in graphics software. The images were converted to grayscale graphics by selecting color range and setting the parameter of fuzziness. The grayscale images were printed as 3D texture height simulation on the substrates and coated by printing the color images as texture mapping. Based on these wood texture digital images, the marquetry art is also considered in the images processing design to increase the artistry of the printed materials. The medium-density fiberboard (MDF) coated printing marquetry surface replicate realistic natural 3D wood texture surface layers on wood-based panels and imitated the effect of handcrafted wood art works. This study proves that printing 3D texture surface material is creative and valuable with ecologically friendly, low-consumption UV-curable inkjet technology and provides a feasible and scalable approach in flooring/furniture/decorative architectural panels.

Highlights

Natural wood textures are appreciated in most forest products industries for their appealing visual characteristics including grain and color, and their fine surface tactile sensation
The printing on laminates has traditionally been seen in predigital days as a low end product, because of it looks like fake wood or less value, and decorative papers with wood texture for laminates are typically produced using a rotogravure printing process, which requires numerous manufacturing steps to arrive at a new design
The wood texture was printed on the surface of medium-density fiberboard (MDF) using the process described in the preceding section, and shown in Figures 8 and 9

Summary

Introduction

Natural wood textures are appreciated in most forest products industries for their appealing visual characteristics including grain and color, and their fine surface tactile sensation. The printing on laminates has traditionally been seen in predigital days as a low end product, because of it looks like fake wood or less value, and decorative papers with wood texture for laminates are typically produced using a rotogravure printing process, which requires numerous manufacturing steps to arrive at a new design. This rotogravure printing process is rather expensive and allows only economical production of decorative paper sheets for a specific wood texture design on a very large production scale [2]. While digital wood was printed by mixing resins of dissimilar durometers, the texture properties such as color, accuracy, and specularity are limited

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion