Print Solutions
IST Metz will be speaking and exhibiting at the British Coatings Federation seminars ‘Throwing Light on UV-LED Curing’. The forums take place at Dalmahoy Hotel & Country Club in Edinburgh on 2 October and at Moor Hall in Sutton Coldfield on 9 October.
Booking is at www.coatings.org.uk/uvledforum.
Thomas Gohl, sales manager – sheetfed at IST Metz will be the speaker in Edinburgh and his colleague Jens Langer, sales director – print, will be the speaker at Sutton Coldfield. They will give the history of the technology, explain the current uses and explain the challenges to equipment design and configurations with various technology processes.
The joint managing directors of IST (UK) Simon Mitchell and Chris Schofield will also be on hand to answer questions about the adoption of LED-UV technology in narrow web, sheetfed and digital markets.
‘Because of our history (dating back to 1977) and focus, for many the name IST Metz is synonymous with UV and all its variants,’ said Simon Mitchell. ‘The development of LED-UV chip arrays and semiconductor light matrices (SLMs), based on doped silicon semiconductor technology, has brought a whole new technology to the UV printing world, displacing the traditional mercury arc lamps.’
IST offers UV, LED-UV or LE-UV (and its hybrid Hot Swap) systems to press manufacturers and also retrofits to existing presses, an affordable way for a printer to trial the benefits. An LED-UV retrofit takes about two days to install and comes with a 12 month guarantee.
The company is well positioned to advise printers on the technical advantages of the different UV options and to help customers calculate the costs, including objective advice on the inks and chemistry to use, and the benefits.
LED-UV has clear environmental advantages, using up to 60% less energy than conventional UV. It is well established as a technology for digital presses and is now gaining interest rapidly in the narrow web and sheetfed litho markets. Quick drying technology allows printers to take dry sheets or rolls from the end of the press and process them, enabling them to meet tight deadlines responsively. LED-UV also offers a great aesthetic finish.
LED-UV cartridges are expensive but have a very long life, expected to be a minimum of 20,000 hours. The construction of the LED bars means that individual modules of LED arrays can be exchanged on site, rather than sending the complete unit back for repair. The fact the LED-UV unit switches on and off during production, as substrates pass by, helps to keeps energy usage down.
Chris Schofield added, ‘We expect a really good turnout for the BCF forums in October. It will be a really good place to get up to speed on the potential of LED-UV. For anyone who cannot attend these events, or who want to take matters further and find out more, we do encourage them to sign up for the IST Metz UV Days in Nurtingen, Germany, from 13 to 16 May 2019.’
