Digital Imagen cuts decals for high-speed trains with Summa

Digital Imagen is a company that works in close cooperation with Renfe, the national railway company and Metro Madrid, the public transport company in Madrid. With its extensive experience in the world of digital printing, Digital Imagen has launched an ambitious project. They want to change the traditional method of painting railway vehicles to wrapping them in all-over vinyl decals, cut to size with a Summa F1612 flatbed cutter.

Keeping control over the entire process
As a leading company in railway signage, Digital Imagen is always looking to innovate and develop its services and meet market demands for the highest quality and efficiency. Instead of painting the trains that have suffered from vandalism, they came up with a completely new working method, which includes a special treatment before applying the vinyl.

Not only does this working method prove to be a lot more efficient and robust, but it also ensures Digital Imagen maintains an overview of the entire project from beginning to end. Without the need to outsource cumbersome painting jobs to companies throughout Spain, which will save them both money and time.

Meeting demands for quality and efficiency
To accomplish this task and obtain perfectly cut to size vinyl to apply onto the train units, Digital Imagen uses the Summa F1612 flatbed cutter- which they acquired in 2014. Javier Robledo, Partner of Digital Imagen explains: “Such designs consist of several strips that must be perfectly cut so that the image also fits perfectly from one strip to the next. The accuracy with which the Summa F1612 flatbed cutter cuts the vinyl allows us to wrap each train unit in a customized way and perfectly blend the separate cut pieces into each other.”

Meanwhile, Digital Imagen already finished about 200 train units and has just started a new project for another 95 units.

Javier Robledo continues: “The cooperation with leading manufacturers, such as HP (printing), 3M (vinyl) and Summa (finishing), satisfactorily led to meeting the highest demands in terms of quality and efficiency. Also, the high production speeds of the Summa F1612 helped us to meet even the strictest turnaround times.”

Grow into different markets and applications
The above assignment is already quite a challenge, but it doesn’t stop there for Digital Imagen. When asked what other opportunities the company sees with the F1612 flatbed cutter, Javier Robledo says:

“The F1612 small footprint combined with its high productivity and far-reaching versatility opens up much more opportunities in the future. We already use quite some tools, such as the drag knife, heavy-duty cutting tool, EOT, POT and router. And the machine allows to retrofit even more tools and add-ons whenever needed.  So, we can’t wait for it to grow alongside our business even more and produce a lot more applications, also in very rigid materials.”

Digital Imagen and Rotutech
Rotutech Hispania -  official distributor and point of contact for the technical service of the Summa brand in Spain and Portugal - has advised and assisted the customer throughout the production process. And is responsible for the finishing equipment of both Summa flatbed and cutting plotters.

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