Several UV drying systems now installed in Newspaper Printing Presses

The points to take into consideration when deciding to change to UV printing and the equipment which is needed to be successful is explained by IST METZ. The advantages of using UV technology in newspaper printing will be exemplified by the start up of several UV presses at innovative newspaper printshops.

Beside these installations there is upcoming interest for UV solutions in numerous Newspaper and Coldset companies. The technical reasons are mainly:

• Immediate drying, high density
• Inline Printing of advertising
• Printing of Covers on coated stock
• Printing on SC/LWC-Qualities
• Pre-Production of Inserts
• Interesting Commercials
• Value addition to existing products.

These new possibilities lead to the general opinion that UV curing is an additional possibility to fight the actual economic melt-down. Under some circumstances it can be an investment with a quick ROI. As publishers are holding back with regard to expansion and putting up the brakes for investment plans in new rotary presses, they might be looking for investments with a quick return. With the background of free printing capacities one example would be the in-house printing of products which are actually out-sourced to Heatset. Within a certain circulation the cost advantage in logistics and printing is clearly positive for UV, despite that the price for the inks are higher than in Heatset. Even if the ink-prices for Heatset inks rise constantly parallel to the price of crude mineral oil, and in times of backslash stay at the higher level, there is still a difference to Ink prices of UV-Inks which cannot be compensated by the fact that UV-Inks have due to their composition out of 100 % solid a much higher mileage - in practical circumstances around 20 % - in comparison to Heatset inks which are composed with up to 40 % solvent.

For the successful integration in existing production lines the parameters have to be respected and to be taken into consideration to assure a successful installation:

• Generally higher ink costs
• Different rheological properties (pumping)
• Different chemical properties (ink rollers, blankets)

On the other hand the technical advantages over Heatset such as

• No blistering
• No need of afterburners/post combustion
• No shrinking of the web under heat influence, no rehumidification
• No silicon stripes due to unequal siliconisation
• No rising of the paper fibers
• No set-off of ink on idle rollers, folders, transportation belts and mailroom equipment
• No scrub and scrape problems in the dryer
• No corrugation of the product and the web
• Less space needed than for HS dryers
• No direction change of the undried web

lead to economical and technical advantages over conventional processes.