PRINTING United Expo Hot Products Spotlight: SCREEN TruePress Jet L350UV SAI Label Press

(Editor's note: This review of the Screen Truepress Jet L350UV SAI press, which will debut at the upcoming PRINTING United Expo, is part of an ongoing series featuring longtime industry consultant David Zwang's rundown of his "Must See" products that will be on the show floor.)

SCREEN Americas will be coming back to PRINTING United Expo 2023 with its Truepress Jet L350UV SAI digital UV inkjet label press, and some interesting surprises as well.

SCREEN TruePress Jet L350UV SAI

The Truepress Jet L350UV SAI is the third generation of their prime label UV presses. The SAI prints at 600x600 dpi with Kyocera inkjet print heads up to 12.6" wide (322 mm), with a media width from 4" to 13.7" (100 to 350 mm). It supports a media thickness of 1.6 to 13.7 mil (0.04 to 0.35 mm).

The SAI is a performance press that is designed for a wide range of prime label applications. The SAI series ink set has a wide color gamut. It prints an extended 7-color gamut with CMYKOB+W and, with EQUIOS technology, can actually reduce ink consumption over a straight CMYK ink set. When printing with the orange ink it extends the gamut and also reproduces an impressive gold. It can print up to 164 fpm (60 mpm) or 98 fpm (30 mpm) with white.

One of SCREEN's announcements at PRINTING United Expo is a new Digital Primer for the L350UV platform.

The Digital Primer offers lots of opportunities for use on porous stocks — like felts, for wine labels, and other papers with high absorption rates that UV inkjet printing is usually not very successful with. This primer is not a flood coat; it is jetted when and where needed, making it great for industrial markets where most UV inkjet presses are used. Most inks are designed to print white first and then the other colors on top. However, with this primer you can print color, then primer, then white and create interesting embellishments — all in a single pass. The primer is designed to work on most substrates, including plastics.

SCREEN EQUIOS is the client server-based front end for the entire SCREEN Truepress line of presses. EQUIOS is controlled through a touchscreen interface on the press and also remotely with the use of a tablet. In addition to managing the press operation itself, it is the front-end workflow, including LAB color matching and control. It supports CTP devices and presses with applications that include variable data processing (VDP), color management, and impositions, and it connects with many third-party, JDF-based devices for input and finishing.

While not in the booth, SCREEN recently released and will be speaking about the Truepress PAC830F aqueous based flexible packaging press. The PAC 830F is designed to run their Truepress aqueous-based inks with reverse printing CMYK + heavy white at speeds up to 75 mpm on PET and BOPP films with a printing width of 500-800 mm. It uses Fujifilm Dimatix Samba piezo print heads at a native resolution of 1,200x1,200 dpi. Using SCREEN's expertise in advanced image screening they expect sharper detail and smooth gradients to zero.