Flint and AMS announce LED-UV installation

ACM-Plastic founder and managing director Massimo Raffaele chose to go ahead with the retrofit after following closely the progress of LED-UV curing.

‘Everything I was hearing was like music to my ears,’ said Raffaele. ‘Not just the absence of mercury or the reduced power it uses. The fact that it turns on and off like a switch, cures more quickly and doesn’t emit heat as well as the light all meant it had the potential to change the way we work.

‘Reports in the trade media were saying that the technology wasn’t ready for flexo, but I made enquiries to some of the leading vendors and Air Motion Systems was the one who showed the best understanding of my situation and clearly had the most advanced product offering. It  also had a presence in Europe and, in New Somaca, it had specialists on our doorstep who could collaborate in developing a project with us.’

Air Motion Systems has already made upwards of 140 LED-UV offset litho installation worldwide, but this was its first flexo project.

Air Motion Systems president and chief executive officer Stephen Metcalf said: ‘When ACM-Plastic invited us to look at the flexo process, I was immediately impressed by the synergies that exist between the two technologies.

‘Heat is an unwanted by-product of other UV processes – it is the wavelength of the light in relation to the inks or chemicals that performs the curing. By eliminating the heat, LED removes a whole raft of problems for flexo printing.

‘This is probably the area of application that will most strikingly benefit from the special properties of LED-UV.’