Knowledge Share: UV Curing Lamps

UNBEATABLE PRICES AND SUPERIOR QUALITY

Ultraviolet curing (commonly known as UV curing) is a photochemical process in which high-intensity ultraviolet light is used to instantly cure or dry inks, coatings or adhesives.

The fastest growth sector within the wide-format digital printing industry, UV leap frogs traditional drying methods, increases production speeds, improves scratch resistance, facilitates superior bonding and reduces the number of defective prints.

UV inkjet printing offers an environmental advantage of eliminating volatile organic compound emissions that are found in solvent-based inks that has helped to drive adoption rates in North America and Europe. The print volume of UV inkjet is forecast to rise by 535 per cent in 2018 from 2008 volumes!

Offering high durability and flexibility, UV printing offers significant technical, economic and environmental advantages across a wide variety of printing applications from commercial to industrial to consumer products.

UV CURING LAMPS

Right at the heart of this technology is the UV curing lamp. With a typical life expectancy of approximately 500 hours, lamps can be an expensive consumable particularly if you’re buying from the printer manufacturer.

We offer a wide range of original and generic quality UV lamps for virtually every UV digital printer on the market. Our lamps are known for their reliability, predictability and consistency as the same factories that make lamps for the OEMs manufacture them. We are extremely price-competitive when compared to OEMs and all our UV lamps come with full product warranties.

QUALITY MADE IN THE USA

Our UV lamps are fabricated using American-made General Electric quartz, the highest UV transmitting material available. They are thorium free and do not contain any radioactive gas or additive. Designed with extremely low mercury content, they are exempt from special packaging requirements due to limited amount of mercury used. All packaging is designed to withstand drop test of 20-inches (500 mm) minimum with no damage to contents and remain fit for transport.

Our lamps are IATA (air transport) shipping compliant. They are exempt from OSHA HAZ-COM requirements and do not require special HAZMAT packaging or hazardous waste declaration.

THE LURE OF THE FAR EAST

One of the unfortunate trends within the digital print industry is the availability of cheap Far Eastern imports. We are more expensive than Chinese manufactured lamps but a cheaper product unfortunately doesn’t mean a product is less expensive.

Customers who buy only on price only are overlooking a number of factors. The $40 saved on a Chinese lamp will long be forgotten when the lamp fails in the middle of a printing job. Worse yet, many Far Eastern bulbs draw too much power, which can result in failure of the OEM power supply. Why risk damaging a $4,000.00 component to save a few euros/ dollars? Try asking a far Eastern supplier for a MSDS (material safety data sheet), they can’t offer one because their lamps have high toxic components.

SUPERIOR QUALITY

Our UV lamps simply offer far superior quality to any other lamp available on the market.

Take for example our CH231A lamp for HP printers. This lamp is optimized for printing on corrugated plastic. There is nothing more frustrating than printing a job that looks great out of the printer only to have the ink tear, flake off or pull away from the finished product. Our lamp is manufactured with special additive to increase ink adhesion. We gain additional 8 per cent UV output for that purpose. Furthermore, our lamp is made from ozone free quartz tubing. This reduces the need to ventilate in small confines saving energy.

Then there’s our Vzero 085D UV lamp for the Agfa Anapurna printer family. This produces additional UV lines assuring better printing performance. Anyone using the OEM product can vouch how temperamental this bulb can be. Our design is proven to be reliable and overcomes OEM starting issues. We are night and day better than any other version of a Vzero lamp.

We supply original lamps and generics when we can design a superior quality than the OEM.

PRICE AND PEACE OF MIND

As a western manufacturer, it is a challenge to balance a bare-bones price with the level of quality and service that we pride ourselves with. We have found time and time again, some customers who come to us after their Chinese UV lamps fail and their printers go down.

All our UV lamps carry a 500 hours usage warranty no questions asked and we offer a one-year product warranty. We have more than 1000 UV lamps in stock and operate next day delivery.