Improve your production on all fronts, quickly, with Baldwin’s UV retrofits.
A UV retrofit is an installation of UV technology on a machine that is already installed and/or in use. With fast installations and customizable builds, Baldwin’s UV retrofits can transform your existing machines with minimal downtime.
Benefits of UV retrofit:
Immediate speed and productivity increases: With instant curing, UV can dramatically increase your productivity by over 30% once installed. With LED, manufacturers and printers can take advantage of instant start-ups and shut-downs.
Improve visual appearance: By using UV curing and photo initiator-based inks, printers can create more vibrant images and sharper dots, while avoiding the marking and scratching that is common when dealing with solvent-based inks.
Expand production capabilities: Curing is currently being utilized in many facets of printing, packaging, and manufacturing to achieve superior results. By implementing UV, printers and manufacturers can work with materials and products that were otherwise inaccessible.
Reduce energy consumption: LED UV provides low-heat curing, instant start-up and shut-down, and programmable UV energy emissions, all of which work to minimize energy expenditure.
About the UV retrofitting process:
A Baldwin expert will visit your site and assess the machine you wish to retrofit.
Once your machine is UV-prepped, we will begin the installation process, which is typically 2-4 days.
Our team will provide your operators with complete and comprehensive training.
We provide lifetime support for retrofits.
Some of the Brands We Retrofit:
Komori
Koenig & Bauer
Heidelberg
RMGT
Ryobi
Mitsubishi
Manroland
Sakurai
FAQs
Can we retrofit your machine? YES!
We provide a variety of builds to fit operations on virtually any scale. We can also do custom builds to cater to your exact needs.
Machines we have retrofitted with UV:
Sheetfed Presses
Web Offset Presses
Narrow Web Flexo Presses
Digital Inkjet Presses
Rotogravure Presses
Industrial Assembly Lines
Do I have to replace my other drying methods? NO!
UV can operate stand-alone or alongside your existing drying technologies, such as infrared, powder spray, or convection drying.
Case studies:
VISOgraphic is a Chicago-based commercial printer specializing in collateral marketing and direct mail. Extensive research led VISOgraphic to Baldwin Technology, which sold the printer on the benefits of LED UV. The printer purchased a 40-inch, six-color RMGTm10 Series press with coater, retrofitted with AMS Spectral UV’s LED UV curing technology.
It delivered everything it promised, according to Chief Operating Officer John Dahlke, which led to VISOgraphic’s purchase of an RMGT 9 Series five-color plus coater, also fitted with LED UV. Among the many benefits Dahlke detailed is how LED UV enabled VISOgraphic to venture beyond primarily commercial work to a mix of higher-margin plastics, print embellishments and packaging.
“One of the values we saw right away is a lot of these jobs are running on really light stocks with 300% coverage in coating. The press couldn't run fast because that ink was just diving in the sheet. It was causing a lot of issues in the delivery, so we really had to slow down,” he recalled. “When we went to LED, we could forgo coating in some of those situations and the delivery was not a problem, essentially, anymore so we could have faster run speeds.”
Atlanta, Georgia-based Tucker Castleberry is a family-owned printing and communications company that provides solutions for printing, direct mail and marketing. Vice-President Kent Tucker said Tucker Castleberry retrofitted a six-color 40-inch Man Roland sheetfed press in January 2019 and instantly gained efficiency by running at 30% to 40% faster press speeds because LED-UV curing eliminated the concern of marking in the delivery.
A key takeaway that Tucker emphasized was the immediate buy-in from his press operators.
“Our pressmen are not shy. They'll let us know if they're not happy. After a few weeks of having the LED, they said, ‘This is a game-changer … our lives are so much easier,’” Tucker noted. “I think the bindery would probably say the same thing. These guys, they literally just shut down the press. They can go home for the weekend, and the ink stays in the fountain. Come back in, Monday morning, and fire it up. Our guys are all in. In fact, they're begging us to retrofit our other press for LED or buy a new press. It's been a home run throughout the plant.”
ANRO Inc., based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, specializes in turnkey solutions for corporate printing, direct mail, online print management solutions, fulfillment, graphic design and digital communication services. Chief Information Officer and vice president of strategy Paul DeSantis said ANRO converted a nine-color Heidelberg Speedmaster press with a dedicated curing tower to LED UV two years ago. The primary goal was to extend the equipment’s lifespan while diversifying product offerings, but he reports the company benefited in many other ways.
“It also complemented our wide-format digital environment, so we got a lot of synergies from adopting the technology there,” he pointed out. “A lot of direct mail printing takes place here, so a lot of unique substrates that we need to print … it really helped us in that area, too.”
DeSantis applauded the “digital-like” efficiency ANRO has achieved through the LED UV upgrade among its many advantages.
“When you're running lightweight stocks or super-heavy coverage or 24-point board, we really had to slow the machine down, because we were worried about scuffing and picking and delivery issues,” he recalled. “When we put the LED in, we were able to go at full speed immediately, and it didn't matter what kind of substrate we were running, what kind of ink coverage it was -- 300% ink coverage with coating on plastic. We could cure everything with one lamp in the delivery. Really, it was a dramatic effect for us, right off the bat.”
Another big advantage for ANRO by using UV LED is that the pages come off the back of the press dry. “Being a perfector, you're printing on both sides of the paper, and on a large job like, for example you're printing a book, those stacks of paper would be all over the shop, waiting to cure before we could go into finishing,” he commented. “Now those things are flowing right through. A skid comes off; they'll wrap that skid right away and ship it out to the binder if it's going out. Those types of efficiencies are very digital-like.”
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