As a print shop you always have a need to streamline production, reduce hard costs and inject flexibility in to your print workflow to open up new opportunities for short-run jobs, especially in offset. UV-curable inks are not necessarily new to the print industry and have a wide range of uses including wide-format, packaging and label printing. In fact, UV-curable has been around since the 1980s, but in 2017 there are 3 convincing reasons to make the switch.

Reason #1: Take on offset short-runs with confidence

As the print industry continues to evolve over time, we continue to see a need from printers to handle short-run jobs of 5,000 sheets or less. UV-curable inks make this a reality by allowing many different ridged and flexible materials to be printed on directly without mounting or clean-up of the press. Save the labor, equipment and extra process costs of things like mounting, press prep and lamination while gaining a bonus of eliminating the problems those process add to your finished product. Don’t just take our word for it, check out this WhatTheyThink video with one of our printing customers.

Reason #2: Less impact on the environment—and some savings too

UV-curable inks have been around for a minute, but it is only in recent years that the design improvements and the technology upgrades to LED UV-curing has revolutionized the process for offset printing such as with the GSNA RMGT family of presses. The advantages of switching from a traditional lamp perfecting system for curing to LED UV-curing includes zero ozone pollution for significantly less environmental impact, impressive energy savings, superior ease-of-use and—maybe most importantly for your production workflow—instant drying. Additional, UV-curable inks don’t dry until cured and can contain no VOCs, which provides significant advantages for operator safety and press clean-up, unlike water-based and solvent-based inks. See how Birmingham Printing uses the RMGT 9 Series to achieve their environmental impact goals.

Reason #3:  UV-curable inks provide superior ease of use, speed, quality and stability

For the last couple of years, industry analysts such as Keypoint Intelligence/InfoTrends have been predicting and showing signs of the significant growth potential in UV-curable inks. The growth is largely due to the gains printers will see once they switch. Most of the gains point back to the basic properties of UV-curable ink. The ink itself doesn’t change viscosity nor does it require the removal or transfer of solvents; it is very stable. It also doesn’t absorb into the material it is being printed on, which reduces consumption. And as mentioned before, with LED UV-curing it dries instantly. The basic properties of the UV inks create a printing environment where you can print faster, switch media faster and clean up…you guessed it, faster. Moreover, UV inks are known to produce finer dots creating a sharper image with deeper color adding value to your final product. 

​In 2017, make the move to an offset press solution that will not only provide you multiple ways to answer your customers’ needs, but give you superior performance, quality and cost savings. Let our team at GSNA show you how the RMGT family of presses can change your business. As the leaders in LED UV-curing with the first press to market in 2008, we have the experience you can count on.