The building products industry is a broad worldwide industry that is based around various products and materials used in the construction of buildings. Matthews successfully provides marking devices to many product segments in the building products industry.

Sweden is one of the largest wood processing countries in the world. With a sales and manufacturing location there, it is no surprise that Matthews developed quite a few systems for marking lumber and engineered wood products. Matthews Swedot has extended it expertise to the world, through over 50 installations.

Product coding can be complicated by printing systems that don't withstand tough environments. Our rugged industrial printers offer reliable operation under the most demanding of conditions.

Masonry Products
Cement Bags
Vinyl Siding
Engineered Wood Products (I-Joist, LVL, OSB, Plywood)
Boards-Gypsum, Wall wafer, OSB, Green
End Grain Marking
Bar Coding
Steel Frames
Doors & Windows
Floor & Wall Tiles

Following are a few examples of how Matthews has helped the building industry:

Masonry Products
Masonry products are made of clay, stone or cement based products that are used in the building industry. Typical examples include roofing tiles, bricks, fabricated cement pipes and blocks. Traditionally, these products were not marked. Today, marking these products is done to provide a date of manufacture, used for production quality control and warranty tracking purposes.

Matthews offers a wide range of coding and marking products that suit the masonry products segment. Ink-jet printing is most preferred to mark onto masonry products for the following reasons:

• Non-contact printing (marking head is free from contact with dust)
• Non-contact printing works best when marking onto inconsistent
  product shapes and sizes
• Ability to print variable text such as date and time codes
• Wide selection of inks

Cement Bags
For durable printheads and flexible printing options, manufacturers often choose ink-jet to print company information, date, and batch codes onto filled bags of cement. Known for dependable print performance, Jet-A-Mark Drop-On-Demand Printers are used in many such applications.

Vinyl Siding
Vinyl siding products are used to cover the exterior of a building. Marking these products provides a date of manufacture used for production quality control and warranty tracking.

Matthews offers a wide range of coding and marking products to suit the vinyl siding product segment. Both ink-jet, contact and indenting technologies are capable of marking vinyl siding products.

Engineered Wood Products (I-Joist, LVL, OSB, Plywood)
Engineered wood products are used in the building industry to provide framework, sheathing, and floor supports for buildings. Engineered wood products are marked in order to print building code details, structural ratings, stress grade test results, species identification and association trademarks. There are two differences between engineered wood products and natural wood products. An engineered wood product is simply a piece of wood that has been cut, dried, altered, glued and cured to become a structural building component. Natural wood products, such as stacked and dimensional lumber, are cut wood in its natural form.

Matthews provides marking solutions for a multitude of engineered wood products, such as panel board, I-joists, flanges and wood moldings. Manufacturers use ink-jet printers to print company logos, as well as size, quality and species information. The DOD5100 is a rugged industrial ink-jet printer that provides outstanding print flexibility, high resolution printing of text and print speeds of up to 788 fpm.

For those manufacturers who need their company logo to stand out in the crowd, our IP9000 High-Resolution Printing System offers high-resolution printing of text, logos and bar codes. The system prints up to five lines of information and can be integrated with other operating systems.

Matthews offers a wide range of coding and marking products that are ideal for the engineered wood products segment. Ink-jet and contact technologies are capable of marking engineered wood products. Ink-jet offers one benefit over contact and indenting-- it is capable of printing real-time information onto the product. Real-time printing information is beneficial to manufacturers that want to apply a date and time code to a product. The main advantage that offset technology holds over ink-jet, is a lower cost per mark.

Boards-Gypsum, Wall wafer, OSB, Green
Water-resistant inks and our Jet-A-Mark Drop-On-Demand Printers are the perfect combination for complying with UL regulations for marking fire-resistance classifications and other product information. Fast print speeds of up to 788 fpm and excellent logo printing capabilities make these ink-jet printers a popular choice for coding many different types of boards.

Recently, many customers began requesting small character ink-jet printing for these products. To meet this need, we offer the IP9100 Small Character Printer, for one-line printing speeds of up to 300 fpm. For multiple lines of print (or faster printing speeds), Matthews Continuous Ink-Jet Printers can print character sizes that range from 1/32" to 3/4", at speeds of up to 1400 fpm.

End Grain Marking
The need for flexible printing systems is a must when printing company logos, sorting codes or grading information on the end grain of timber. Jet-A-Mark Drop-On-Demand Ink-Jet Printers and High Resolution InkJet fill this need. With a rugged valve printhead, these systems can code a variety of character sizes from a single printhead and produce excellent logos.

Bar Coding
For manufacturers who need to provide finished wood products with bar codes for internal tracking purposes, we offer High Resolution InkJet printers for automated coding.

Steel Frames
We make it easy to comply with marking requirements for printing manufacturer's identification, thickness, coating and strength information with our wide range of marking technologies. Choose between our Jet-A-Mark Drop-On-Demand Printers and Print-A-Mark Offset Printers to get the job done. Both provide multiple printing of text, logos and bar codes.

Doors & Windows
Doors and Windows were not traditionally marked. Only the component pieces or materials of doors and windows were marked, such as the glass. Once manufacturers began to offer warranties, it immediately became important to track the date of manufacture. The mark could also then be used for quality control purposes.

Matthews offers an impressive array of coding and marking products to suit both metal and wood framed doors and windows. Ink-jet, contact and indenting technologies are all capable of marking these products.

Floor & Wall Tiles
Floor and wall tiles are a unique product segment in that they are only manufactured in a few countries. Floor and wall tiles are marked to establish date code and determine grade. This information is also printed onto the shipping container, which holds the tiles.