Infrared cassette

Infrared cassette

The label printing market has traditionally used water-based inks and varnishes which require hot-air dryers to evaporate the water content, leaving the residual pigment on the web. Nowadays the use of UV inks and varnishes is much more widespread, but printing machines may still need to accommodate drying for both UV and water-based inks.

This can be impractical on some machines as the press needs re-webbing when switching between water-based and UV processes, and impossible on others if the original hot air dryers were removed to make space for the UV lampheads. This is where our infrared cassette offers a solution.

GEW offer a flexible solution to enable the drying of water-based inks, even on a press with no hot air dryers. Here an infrared cassette can be inserted into the housing of an E2C lamphead and simply run as an infrared lamp, using the existing UV power supply, control interface and cooling system: the evaporated water content of the ink extracted through the existing UV exhaust ducting. 

IR cassettes can be used on their own to achieve production speeds typically in the range of 45 – 90 m/min or in series with existing hot-air dryers to further increase the productivity of water-based print jobs. 

After the water-based job is finished, simply swap back the cassettes and restart the UV system to resume production with UV inks.