Drying, Curing & UV
company 15 per cent of energy savings which is impressive and which was very important for the payback of the system.”
Combining the switch to LED with other
effi ciency initiatives has brought signifi cant savings for the company, as Roze outlines: “Clearly our intention is to go for 100 per cent LED. We want to be full LED, we are still waiting for the price of the varnish to decrease, which is starting to be the case and I think it’s a question of months to do the switch. With the same volume of production, I changed the LED system and I changed the lights of the warehouse... I think I saved something like 120 to 130 megawatt hour per year. We will save about 30,000 Euros per year. With the energy saving that we see now with the system, I think the payback will be around three years.” Roze also points to the simplicity of working with LED: “The system is very easy to use. It’s stable. It’s on-off , so you always get the same quality. You don’t have to change the lamp, you don’t have a decrease of performance of the lamp, so it’s very, very comfortable to use for the operators. And I don’t hear about the system, which is a good thing!”
environment is very important for our customers.” The opportunity to begin to work with UV LED curing technology came when Roze invested in new presses: “Two years ago I bought two production lines and at that time I wanted also to decrease my energy consumption, the energy prices were very, very high, and then I had to study what kind of system.” After consideration he chose GEW’s interchangeable ‘ArcLED’ systems to get the fl exibility of using both technologies on the press: “I choose to go with GEW because my experience with them was very good, and the second point that what was very important to me is the versatility of the system, because for the varnish, for the colours, we can go back to the UV. The experience has shown me that for the colours it was not really a problem, but for the varnish we decided for the moment to stay with the UV system, because of the price of the varnish - and here the versatility of the GEW system is very, very convenient, of course.”
A further reason for Roze’s choice to use air- cooled LED curing, wherever possible, was the apparent ease of installation, and the lack of any air conditioning at the Stic Image plant. He notes: “The AeroLED system seemed to be very compact and easy to put on the machine. I have no climatisation, so I decided to go for AeroLED because we wanted to decrease the level of heat in the factory, but also we wanted to decrease the level of noise and as far as we had already in place all the extraction systems, we didn’t have anything to do to connect the AeroLED system to our presses.” Ultimately, Roze’s intention is to switch entirely to UV LED and to eliminate any conventional curing, as he explains: “We still have a mercury system on the fi nishing line but of course we will switch to LED because we want at the end of the day, to work only with one range of ink. The experience we have with the LED... we did the savings on the energy part, it’s at the scale of our
Christophe Picca, pressroom manager, agrees: “It’s true that the system is very easy to use, to interchange the cassettes, so if we’d have any problems with LED ink supplies we can swap back to the old mercury cassettes and ink. LED drying has allowed us to stabilise our colorimetry in production.” He also points to the increased productivity that LED has brought: “With LED drying, we run at a speed of approximately 50 to 80 metres a minute... usually with the mercury drying, we ran at about 50 metres per minute, so we have improved the speed of production.” With the benefi t of hindsight, Roze now looks back and smiles about his earlier apprehension when making the move to LED: “I had a lot of questions before... the complexity, the inks, the colours and the real savings. It was a diffi cult decision for me to take, with time I see that in fact this project has been very easy. The installation was quick and the system is easy to use - no problem with the colour, we have the savings, so I was a little bit afraid of doing that investment and now I’m very happy. I studied this decision two years ago, it was very important to have feedback from people that have done this change. It was very important to feel also that the ink suppliers are ready. There is less problem with the varnish and at the same time we have had this very high price of electricity increase, and for me, no that was the right time to do it. “For me, I see that of course it’s a very good investment.”
28
July/August 2025
www.convertermag.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62
