In all, APL has four different UV systems for the Indian printing and packaging industry — APL Smart UV made at APL facility in India; AMS APL P3 Conventional UV made in USA at the AMS Spectral UV facility; Baldwin QuadCure conventional UV made in UK at the Baldwin facility; and AMS XP Series LED UV made in USA at AMS Spectral UV facility.

 

APL has a unique cassette design with high quality metallurgy to sustain huge amount of heat radiated from the UV lamp. “They are mostly air cooled cassettes equipped with electronic power ballast. We also control the flow of air through damper technology. This is a unique feature in APL Smart UV. This is important as it helps improve the life of the bulbs,” Abhishek Paul, managing director, APL Machinery, says.  

 

This system also comes with dichroic reflectors and cold UV mechanism to stop infrared to get transferred on the substrate. “Also, we listen to customer’s pain points and modify the system according to customer needs, in which the design of cassette can also be modified. The main thing is the programme which we always set as per the customer choice and machine configuration,” he adds.

 

The AMS APL P3 conventional UV is a trouble-free system and it has proven itself on many new presses. AMS is the official supplier for KBA presses. 

 

“The advantage a customer gets with AMS APL P3 UV system is that it is same as APL Smart UV. Only the cassette is made by AMS, which is the highest quality cassette available right now and it offers 45% power saving in comparison to all the competition. You can run the press at a speed of up to 18,000 sheets per hour,” Paul says.

 

After the merger of Baldwin and AMS into AMS Spectral UV, APL has now more variety in products. One of them is Quadcure UV system. It has huge power lamps and can go up to 240watts/cm or 600watts per inch.

 

Paul agrees that LED UV is definitely a replacement for conventional UV. “With LED, people are doing jobs which they could not do in conventional UV. On LED UV there is no substrate limitation. “This is all possible because there is no heat and also because of the high energy curing power in LED UV modules, which can cure ink on every substrate. Today, LED UV is mostly being used to print plastics and other heat-sensitive material,” he says.

He adds that in LED UV ROI (return on investment) is quick, and job turnaround time decreases significantly. “Now, people are more likely to install LED UV as they are investing in new four- or five-colour, which doesn’t have enough space for conventional UV. In this case, LED UV is a better bet. It also helps printers market their brand with LED UV-printed products. I believe in the next two years or so, a majority of players will convert to LED UV,” he adds.

He also argues that the prevailing sentiment in the market that there are issues with LED UV, such as the unavailability of inks and varnishes is not true. “It may have been true a few months ago but now the LED UV is growing fast and ink and other raw material suppliers are geared up to the task. It’s a myth that inks and varnishes are not available. There are lot of players in the market for ink and varnish,” he adds. 

APL installations

 

AMS LED: Ten plus installations in offset (Infinity Advertising, Faridabad; Shri Maruthi Printers, Coimbatore; Maruti Printers, Ahmedabad; Mrugal Offset Printers, Ankleshwar; VV Offset, Nagpur; Maruti Printplast, Morbi; AB Printpack, New Delhi; SS Print Delhi, among others) and 15 plus installations in gravure.

AMS P3 UV: Fifty plus installations in offset (most of the installations are in multiple UV cassettes. Some installations are Concord Packaging, Vadodara; Nemlaxmi, Surat; Rathna Offset, Chennai; Stylo Media, Kolkata; and Macro Printers, Ludhiana) and more than 20 installations in gravure at Uflex group; Packpoint, Jodhpur; NB Polyfilms, Hyderabad; Vardhman Polymers, Alwar; Value Pack, New Delhi; among others.

 

APL UV: More than 100 installations in offset (SS Artographs, Sivakasi; ICMC, Chennai and Baddi; Angad, Kalaamb; Infinity Advertising, Faridabad; Haryana General Store, New Delhi; Shriram Veritech, Noida; Park Offset, Kolkata; Printwell Offset, Rajkot; Dabang Dunia, Indore; SS Industries, Dehradun; Jagdamba Packaging, Patiala; Standard Cartons, New Delhi; Design Packaging, New Delhi; SM Packaging, Mumbai; Bikram Printers, Rajpura, among others.) and more than 10 installations in gravure (Raunak Printers, New Delhi, Latex Chemical, Kanpur, among others).