Bemrose Booth solves print drying problem 04 August 2010

Ticket printing specialist Bemrose Booth has achieved more cost-effective process drying at its Hull plant by commissioning a carbon infra-red (CIR) drying system.

Graham Winship, operations manager at Bemmrose Booth, explains that the system, from Heraeus Noblelight, was installed on its Kodak Versamark high speed print unit.

It solved the problem of quickly drying heavily inked end-of-roll alerts on the tickets when the company moved away from an expensive toner printing system to the Versamark approach, which can deliver up to 204.8 million droplets per second of water-based ink.

Winship says he was aware that Heraeus had experience of drying products printed using Versamark print heads and so, following trials at Heraeus's Neston application centre, the firm commissioned the purpose-designed drying system.

In brief detail, it consists of a 12.9kW carbon medium wave, infrared unit, providing ultra-efficient drying, as water absorbs infrared most strongly in the medium wave part of the spectrum.

The system is automatically controlled by an optical pyrometer, which measures the temperature of the web after it leaves the heating and drying module. As the line speed alters, or if ambient conditions change, the system's infrared emitters are infinitely regulated to maintain a pre-set temperature.

"It was important that the ink was dried effectively and efficiently without detriment to the sensitive paper at line speeds up to 60m/min," recalls Winship. "The Heraeus system does exactly what it says on the box."

Brian Tinham

Related Companies
Heraeus Noblelight Analytics Ltd

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