UV Printing: Can You Afford To Ignore It?

HERE WE are at the beginning of another new year with the hopes that 2010 brings us all the health, wealth and happiness that we all strive for. With new thoughts and ideas on how to improve our businesses, we realize the importance of spending the budget wisely. What purchases are the most important for the future of our business? Many of us operate our businesses much like our lives.

Having two of my daughters in college this year and the third involved in numerous activities in high school, my wife and I are asking the same questions as I do in my business life: What is the starting budget amount allotted for this year? Did we allocate the appropriate funds per event? What are our immediate needs? How urgent are these needs? Can we survive if we postpone these purchases and what effect will it have on our lives? When it's all said and done, will we stay at our budget?

Many of us have heard that adding UV printing to our repertoire would increase our offerings to our customers but have not completely understood exactly why. Do the benefits overcome the added expenses? Is UV the answer for developing our business? With today's economy, should I make this capital investment? The question might actually be; "Can you afford not to make the investment?" Is it safer to be proactive or reactive?

UV printing is becoming more and more popular within our industry. Numerous printers are now investing into this technology for various reasons: to produce their current customers' products more efficiently and effectively; to separate themselves from their competition; or maybe just to become that "greener printer." It could even be all of the above.

A correctly configured UV printing press could enhance your current business along with creating many new opportunities that were never possible with a conventional machine. Many figure out quickly that the rewards are well worth the investment when approached and executed properly. UV has something to offer for everyone willing to take that plunge.

'Green' Benefits of UV

We all know about how "green" the world has become. Well UV printing is an eco-friendly practice. Because of the polymerization method or cross link during the drying process, you have no solvents that are released or absorbed in the substrate, as do conventional inks. This equates to no VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), which makes it much safer for you and the environment, therefore making it more inviting to customers looking to print with that "greener printer."

Since UV inks are dried or cured with ultraviolet lights, drying time is eliminated. Unlike conventional oil-based inks, UV dries instantly, as soon as the sheet passes under the light. At that time it turns from a liquid state to a solid. UV inks are not absorbed into the stocks, which also means that the ink film remains on top of the sheet. This translates to more vibrant print and visual effects. Conventional inks not only have to dry with evaporation, they will loose up to 50 percent of the initial ink film applied through evaporation and absorption. You cannot match the quality of UV inks on an offset sheet using the conventional process.

Other important advantages of instant drying with UV are faster turnaround times and non-marking or smudging on the finishing equipment or the non-porous substrates. You now have the option to back up the job right away, no matter what the run length, and/or send the job straight to the bindery. This will enable you to not only save the valuable floor space in your building but also not have the worries of blemishes on a cutter or folder.

UV Reduces Bottlenecks

Ask yourself these questions again:

• How many times have drying issues been a bottleneck within your company?

• How much time and money have you spent on additional make–readies when the job was too wet to handle?

• Why do we have to do a second pass when overprinting metallic inks?

• Were these additional costs passed on to your customers or did you have to chalk it up for experience and try not to let it happen again?

• What about that plastic or foil job that sat there for days while you paced like an expectant father outside of a delivery room until it finally dried?

Think about how great it would be to not have these worries.

How about those special effects? Some of you might not think you currently have the customer base for these applications, but are you sure? If you were aware how predictable and repeatable some of these processes actually are, I think you would change your mind.

Just imagine how your customers would react if you showed them a sample of the reticulating strike-through effect on the company mascot, which happens to be a lizard. Or what about the color shift coating that turns a silver Mercedes from blue to green? Think about the soft feel of a suede love seat in a sales brochure. I have seen some very impressive printed samples out there. So why not have this option to offer your customers?

I realize that UV applications are not for everybody, but if you are looking for something that will truly set you apart from other printers or feel the need to be more productive throughout your process, UV could be the answer that you're looking for. IPG