The TruepressJet 520HD will be fitted with Adphos NIR dryers, a move which will open the way to faster production with out damaging quality or production.
Screen is enhancing its TruepressJet 520HD continues feed inkjet press with a new drying system to enable the press to print at up to 120m/minute.
The press already uses a heated drum and hot air dryers to dry the SC inks that are unique to Screen. These enable the press to print on standard offset papers without pre or post treatment, lowering the cost of paper for litho subsection print significantly.
The new drying system is an Adphos NIR (near infra red unit). The technology is tuned to deliver energy at a fixed frequency which heats only water molecules and not the paper printed on. “Ninety percent of the energy delivered is used to evaporate the water from the surface of the paper,” says Cees Rem, Screen Europe’s TruePressJet 520 product manager.
This means that throughput can be increased from 50m/minute currently to 75m/minute and 120m/minute, reducing print resolution from 1200x1200dpi to 1200x600dpi and then 600x600dpi. However, Screen believes that there will no difference in perception for the vast majority of users.
These users are the growing base of users of the its flagship commercial press. Among them is Bluetree Design & Print which runs two of the high quality inks presses. The equipment will be fitted to at least one of the presses, though not until the new year when demand will ease enough for the distribution that the retrofit and testing will cause.
Even then Bluetree has no plans to take full advantage of the extra speed, intending to move the machine to the intermediate 75m/minute option.
“We will go to 75m/minute because for the vast vast majority of people there’s no perceptible difference, while at 600x600dpi most people can perceive a difference,”
Says joint managing director Adam Carnell.
“For around 50% of our work we might run at 600dpi, but we need standardisation and can’t have operators being asked to run at different speeds.”
The Adphos technology is already in use with Kodak’s Prosper inkjet press. On the TruepressJet, the technology will reduce the dependency on the drum to heat the paper from beneath, which risks drying the paper.
