Flint Group launches Ultraking XCURA

Developed in collaboration with OEMs and lamp manufacturers, XCURA products are said to have a very high color strength, display excellent ink/water stability and require lower levels of energy to operate. They also comply with ISO 2846-1 and are suitable for printing to ISO 12647-2 standard. One key feature of XCURA is the ability of one product to print on certain non-porous, as well as standard coated and uncoated substrates.

The lamps filter out or eliminate wavelengths below 290nm and consequently, there is no ozone created, removing the need for exhaust. In addition heat is controlled due to unique lamp design and control technology.

Rod Balmer, director of global research and product development at Flint Group, said: ‘These inks are formulated using a selection of photoinitiators which absorb at the higher end of the spectrum and are optimized for high speed curing. These inks are highly reactive, the need for multiple UV lamps is not necessary, thus reducing operating costs for the printer.’

Richard Wilson, UV product management director at Flint Group, stated that XCURA will be attractive to the fast turnaround conventional printers who can save energy costs by eliminating infra-red drying and warm air drying for water based coatings, turning around work in a matter of minutes, saving on work-in-progress and improving delivery times.

‘As commercial printers are pushed to offer shorter and shorter lead times, work-in-progress must be kept to a minimum and jobs have to be turned-around for next day delivery. Low energy UV curing will allow the conventional commercial printer to manufacture to these new targets. We can see the web-to print sector in particular being early adopters of this technology because of the dramatic reduction in manufacturing time and the lower entry cost than traditional UV,’ Wilson said.