Online exclusive: Seattle printer differentiates with hybrid UV

ColorGraphics-Seattle is one of four facilities operated by ColorGraphics, a family-run, $130 million commercial printer. The Seattle location, which has about 120 employees, offers "just about everything that prints," according to David Carns, vice president of operations. Its four Heidelbergs--two six-color fullsize sheetfed presses, a six-color heatset web, and an eight-color fullsize CD 102--print a range of products, from high-end annual reports and collateral brochures to coupon mailers.

Seeking to differentiate itself from other area printers, ColorGraphics-Seattle decided to invest in hybrid UV technology in July 2001. "We wanted to diversify ourselves in the marketplace, which would allow us to capture more business that was leaving this market due to the lack of UV printers in this area," explains Carns. The printer installed a hybrid interdeck UV curing system from IST GmbH (distributed in the U.S. by technotrans america, Inc.’s Sheetfed Div., Corona, CA) on the CD 102. We asked Carns for more details on ColorGraphics-Seattle’s installation, and how hybrid technology has helped open new doors for the printer and its customers.

Why did ColorGraphics-Seattle invest in UV?
We do an awful lot of annual-report work, which lends itself to the uncoated hybrid UV printing. That was one area we knew we had a market for. Along with that, we wanted to service current clients’ needs in vinyls, plastics and foils, and all of the unique products that lend themselves nicely to the UV process. The hybrid inks also allow you to UV coat inline.

Why did you decide on this particular system, and this setup?
The system had superior cooling capabilities and user-friendly application equipment to work with, in comparison to some of the other systems I looked at. Heat is an unwanted bi-product [with UV], and difficult in wear and tear on your machine. There is also a distortion factor on plastics when your system doesn’t extract heat well enough.
I wanted to have total flexibility to produce any type of work that UV would lend itself to. This includes dry trapping on solid fields of metallics or opaques; printing on top of unconventional substrates and having a proper curing and adhesion of the ink; and high-fidelity reproduction on uncoated stock. I had three specific areas I was targeting, and each required different press setups--I had to have flexibility in the system to do that.

Why go with hybrid UV vs. full UV?
I have one eight-color press and didn’t want to dedicate it to fulltime UV. I wanted to be able to move in and out of conventional and UV printing on that machine. As our business grows in that area, we’ll be looking at a second eight-color and a possible dedication of it to full UV.

What was installation and start-up like?
We installed [the hybrid UV system] about six to nine months after the press was installed. It was a minimal amount of downtime on the machine to retrofit it to the existing piece of equipment--the press came UV-ready from the factory, so we just needed to drop the system in. We basically wanted to stage the installation of the press, get the crews familiar with the new technical parts of the machinery, and then drop the UV on them afterward so they wouldn’t get overwhelmed. We ran the press conventionally for six months. It was on live UV work in a matter of a couple of weeks. What’s the learning curve like?
All of the press operators took it on as a personal challenge. Formal training took about two weeks, to understand how to manage and maintain the system, get ink down on materials and cure it. Of course, there are months of nuances that come after as you learn it.

What are some benefits of the hybrid UV process?
On foils, you can get ink down on the foil and have it cure and be dry coming off the press, without having to deal with delivery issues with it being wet. With plastics and vinyls, you know you can move the job right into the bindery when you’re done printing--the ink is dry right off the press, so there are no days of drying cycles in your work. A lot of times on plastics and vinyls, it takes quite a bit of time for stuff to cure hard enough to be able to handle it and move it into postpress.

Before installing the hybrid system, did you print on plastics and vinyls conventionally? If so, how?
Only when we had no other choice--a conventional printer does that only when one of its very best customers says, "I want you to do this." Most of the time, we’d steer [the job] to someone that has a UV machine. Inks dry by oxidation and absorption, and when you have no absorption on your substrate, then you’re totally dependent on oxidation, and it becomes an extremely critical balance that you have to hold.
The beauty with UV is you know as soon as you’re off the press whether you have a saleable product or not, so the risk factors are tremendously reduced. Now it becomes a viable process that you can take to the marketplace.

What limitations are there in terms of consumables?
If you can get the material in to and out of the press, you can pretty much print on anything. I visited a printer on the East Coast that was printing on wood veneer with a UV-equipped conventional press.
For press operators, it’s just changing their thought process from conventionally drying products to curing them by UV energy, so it’s a matter of knowing how much UV energy to place on each printing unit to allow it to cure the ink properly without over-curing.
One typical assumption is that if a little bit [of UV] is good, a lot is better. That’s not the case here--you can overcure and damage the substrate. On vinyls and plastics, you can make them extremely brittle and they’ll shatter. You’re wasting energy, and the wear and tear on the equipment is not necessary. You bring the UV equipment down to the level you need for the type of curing you need done.

How often do you run UV jobs? What’s involved in changeover?
We are running UV 25 percent of our week. We run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We go in and out of UV daily, sometimes every other day--it’s not a set schedule.
Changeover involves some additional washup procedures for compatibility of different [ink and coating] systems. It can take an hour or two or three, depending on what inks were in the press and how they performed. Some inks will cure on the rollers, so you have to wipe the rollers afterward. Opaque whites are more difficult to get into the machine and clean up afterward. Going in [to a UV job] is not an issue--going out is maybe another additional hour of time spent.Any challenges?
Not really---the curing is all there is to it. There are different products in the press, and operators have to have a feel of how those products respond. Outside of that, you just need to know how much energy to place on the product to get it to cure the ink film you’re laying. That’s the one unknown: How do I control the energy, and how much do I need?
A lot of the curing process is adhesion. There are different tests you can perform--tape pulls, etc.--that allow you to judge whether you have good enough adhesion so the ink won’t scuff off or scratch off after the product is finished.

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