Bill Esler

LED drupa
May 31, 2008

Had a chance to see the industrial strength flatbed inkjet printer printers at Agfa and EFI--machines built with heavy carriages and superstructures so there is no vibration when they get moving. 
Also wowed by HP's 36 inch web press with the Scalable Inkjet Technology.
Also was wowed by the live demosntration of the Folia sheetfed 'alternative' Goss is demonstrating--M600 press units using sheetfed inks with a roll feed and a VITs sheeter with spray powder and slow down mechanism. For the right applications it could be very interesting, especially at its delivery speed, the equivalent of 30,000 sph. They say the inkers weren't modified, but I've got to dig deeper here; inkers are the heart of the ink milling and delivery on sheetfeds, the consistency of the ink is entirely different than a normal web. Will let you know.
Also learned more of Ryobi's new LED UV curing. I'm calling it the LED drupa so I can be credited in google like as a phrase coiner. Ryobi is showing LED curing on a smaller sheetfed and exmaining it for bigger machines. The light emitting diodes come from Panasonic. They use 25% the power of regular UV curing systems and no ozone is emitted. Inks have to be specially formulated to be activated by the lower powered LEDs. Toyo made the inks for Ryobi, who says they have run the presses at 16,000 sph with it. Toyo is debuting this LED-UV curable ink at drupa, so stay tuned on offset LED UV.
On the digital side, INX International is showing an LED curable ink, called Summit. We're seeing it appear in addressing systems (Atlantic Zeiser) and doubtless elsewhere.
We'll keep posting
You keep reading at
 www.graphicartsonline.com/drupa

Posted by Bill Esler on May 31, 2008 | Comments (1)