How Can PSPs Identify Which UV Solution is the Right One for Them?
/AMS is most recognized as one of the pioneers of LED UV, and in this film, VP Pat Keogh gives us a great insight into why AMS Baldwin still considers itself the industry leader in LED UV. Editor Morten B. Reitoft (from Inkish) asks Pat Keogh how PSPs (Print Service Providers) should identify which UV solution is the right one for them? LED UV has become an extremely important curing source for many printers as it dries the sheets or the rolls immediately, but listen for yourself and enjoy the interview :-)
See the transcript below.
Morten:
This is Morten from INKISH. We are here at Komori Open House in Utrecht in the Netherlands, and I just met my good friend, Pat.
Pat:
Good to see you again. How are you?
Morten:
Good to see you. I am so good. Pat, if I say that AMS is, let's say very innovative and maybe you can even kind of take credit for being one of the best suppliers of LED lamps, LED UV lamps, would that be fair to say?
Pat:
Absolutely. As I'm sure you know, we are one of the pioneers actually of LED, especially in the larger format, especially for big, high-speed applications like sheet fed and high-speed web. There are lots of players in it, but a lot of them are actually just focused on the low speeds where power is not really an issue, cooling is not really an issue. But when it comes to real challenging applications, that's where we've focused and that's where we've excelled.
Morten:
You mentioned yourself that the competition in this field has grown over the years. If you are, let's say a printer and you want to go into the replacement market, isn't it almost impossible to differentiate when you just see it? I guess you have to talk to people before you really understand the differentiation in the different offerings.
Pat:
There's a lot of different offerings and we have price-based ones and performance-based ones. At the end of the day, we feel that performance is the one that really matters.
Morten:
I think I phrased myself wrongly because I was just thinking that if you say that we are here, for example, just in this hall here, there's two, three companies delivering different UV solutions, and I was just wondering if I was a printer or having a machine that I want to retrofit with UV, how do I find the right supplier for my solution?
Pat:
Okay. Well, in the industry, and this has gone back several years, some of the UV suppliers, conventional UV and LED suppliers, have become more and more aligned to different OEMs. And you don't have to look too far, particularly with the German companies. German suppliers, UV suppliers, tend to be looking after the German OEMs. In our area, and especially in the Baldwin UV AMS side, we have for many, many years been very, very closely associated with Komori, to the point that every UV system we have is actually designed for Komori presses, specifically for their presses.
And we've actually gotten involved in developing the UV systems while the presses are actually in development, so our systems are designed purely for Komori; they're deeply integrated, they're in the control console, and the fact that they're completely in the control means that they're safer as well. So you have something that's factory approved, you have something that we know exactly what we're doing because we've done it hundreds and hundreds of times. If there is an issue that has come up, we've overcome it. And if anybody else comes into this area, they're going to have to deal with all these issues that we've dealt with 10, 15 years ago.
Morten:
That sounds very assuring to me, but does that mean that if you have any other machine, you should not talk to you guys?
Pat:
If you have other machines, what we do is, particularly in our LED systems, we've got different optics for different applications.
Morten:
Okay. So that basically means that you can configure the lamps to fit different types of machinery, right?
Pat:
It's a little bit like, I like to use analogy of glasses. You can't have one set of glasses or one lens that works perfectly for everybody. So what we do is we have the same glasses, but we will change the lens to match whatever the printer’s needs are.
Morten:
That's actually quite a good comparison, right?
Pat:
Yes. And that's one of the reasons why we have so much success, because of the optics.
Morten:
More and more, printers seem to appreciate, and actually accept UV as a drying method, because the inks are maybe getting a little bit cheaper and more accessible from more vendors. They're putting a little bit more pressure on the market. The lamps, I don't know how the price development is with the lamps, but it seems that more and more are using lamps for procuring instead of gas for the web offset machines and for IR and other means on conventional machines. Is the sky the limit?
Pat:
Well, I think one of the things that's really driving it now is environmental concerns, particularly with energy, and particularly with the cost of energy. And this is one of the areas where LED absolutely excels. If I have a traditional 40-inch press with an IR hot air dryer on it, which works extremely well, it'll consume maybe 80 kilowatts. I can have a 10 kilowatt LED system that allows you to print at exactly the same speed with all the extra benefits that you get with having an LED system.
Morten:
Fantastic. And that basically means that people that have conventional machines should consider not just for the environmental impact, but also for the energy cost basically. So when you advise people, do you have ROI models where you can say, "Okay, one kilowatt costs so much and here is the cost of this, and now we can see how much you save?"
Pat:
Yes, we have that. And we also include things to do with maintenance and stuff because an LED system is maintenance free, a conventional system or an IR hot air system isn't. And when we run it in front of a customer, we'll ask them how many hours a day they print, how many days of the week, how many weeks of the year or whatever. They are shocked and stunned sometimes to see the huge savings that they can have. And we also put in a nice little bit at the end to show how much CO2 they've actually saved as well, which is also appealing more and more to people.
Morten:
And when you do that kind of calculation, does that also take the ink cost into consideration?
Pat:
Well, if you're comparing conventional UV with LED, there's almost no difference in the inks. We do also compare water-based or solvent-based inks; we build that in as well. And you'd be surprised, it appears to cost more, but you get more mileage out of UV inks or LED inks, and you also get up to color quicker. You have less wasted sheets. In some cases, it's actually cheaper to use a UV ink than to use a traditional ink.
Morten:
But that message, I don't think that a lot of people know that, right?
Pat:
Well, I'm going to try and make people more and more aware of it, because it was something that I, as my mistake, I just assumed people knew about that. But we have found that that is not necessarily the case. And now we are actually making that part of our ROI model as well.
Morten:
Nice. Last question because when we talk about these things, I can't help thinking about that if you look at a market that has matured over the, let's say, past 10 years, eight, 10 years at least, the thing is that when you look at UV and adoption, I was just thinking, what is the main constraint that you see with the printing companies? If you get the time with them, you can prove that it is probably worthwhile for their business, but still you're not 100% covering the market. So what are the constraints?
Pat:
Well, initially we had the early adopters who will try-
Morten:
Good we have them, right?
Pat:
Right. Good thing we have them. So we had a huge surge. And now we have a situation where new machines have got the technology on it. The field of people who have machines, existing ones, has dwindled a bit because the early adopters took it up. But on new machines, it's standard now, almost totally normal. But in regards to retrofits, that has definitely gone down. And yes, we do find some, but nothing compared to what it used to be.
Morten:
Okay. So what you say is basically that most people have realized how important and how it's good for the environment, it's good for the business, it's good for the energy, it's good for basically everything. Right?
Pat:
Exactly. And none of them will go back. It's amazing, I sometimes go into a print shop and they might have converted two presses and there's still two more to convert. And the print manager has got trouble to try to get the guys who run the UV presses to go back onto the conventional ones because they can run at full speed without ever considering set-off or any of these other issues there were a huge concern before. And what actually has happened in a lot of cases is that we go in and we do the ROI and we talk to somebody, "You printed 10,000." "Yeah, I printed 10,000," and do it. But because the printer is so much more comfortable with a totally cured sheet, they're printing at full speed because they’ve got no concerns. And this is something that we didn't originally factor into the ROIs, which actually is a dramatic help as well on the ROI.
Morten:
And just because of a lamp.
Pat:
Just because of a lamp. Just because of a good lamp.
Morten:
Because of a good lamp. Thank you, Pat.
Pat:
Thank you very much.