Offset Printing - UV/LED Curing

Have you noticed the increase in your supplies prices lately? All manufacturers are having a very hard time with their raw material suppliers.

I believe you would be surprised if you added up all of the potential production hours lost going back and forth. Not to mention the waste of supplies in doing so.

One way for a business to differentiate itself is to offer something its competitors can’t and Rowland and Bentley think their press allows BentleyRowland to do that.

Ultraviolet printing presses are becoming more common. They use ultraviolet light to produce a chemical reaction that bonds their inks to whatever surface the inks are printed on.

For Anilox rollers, one size doesn’t fit all. There are three factors to take into consideration when determining the proper engraving specifications—the angle of the screen (normally 60°), the LPI (lines per inch) and the cell volume.

Would you want to buy printing from a printer that didn’t spend the time and effort to print its own promo piece?

To achieve the best outcome possible, dry trapping is the secret to UV printing. But remember, having the correct amount of lamps in place is the, “Solution.”

So if heat affects various plastics in a variety of ways, why use self-adhesive plastic as underlay for your blanket cylinder?

Many printers have not made the total commitment to running UV inks on a full-time basis for one reason or another.

Are printers just as responsible for this business becoming a commodity as the buyers?

While LED lamps are old news on inkjet presses, they are something of a novelty on the sheetfed side.

“LED inks for inkjet [applications] have been available for a couple years now,” says Mike Sajdak, senior R&D chemist for INX (Schaumburg, IL). “They offer less heat generation, a smaller footprint and faster startup times. Offset LED inks are a little newer.”

At Drupa 2008, Ryobi (xpedx) teamed with Toyo Ink to showcase an LED-UV system for a concept demonstration on the 525GX, a 14 × 20-inch press.