Waterless UV Presses Step Up Plastic Card Output

The first of two KBA Genius 52 UV presses have come on stream to print cards, promotional, utility and informational products at Inplastor in Sweden.

The first of two KBA Genius 52 UV presses have come on stream to print cards, promotional, utility and informational products at Inplastor in Sweden.

Inplastor, which is part of the Xponcard group, one of the biggest producers of plastic cards in Europespecialises in printing different kinds of synthetic substrates.

The Stockholm-based group produces for the north European and Baltic markets, while its SIM cards for mobile phones are sold all over the world.

Before the five-colour Genius 52 UV press was put in to two-shift operation in the Strangnas sheetfed offset department, all the presses there were conventional.

The five-colour version installed in the company's Motala plant is said to be the first of its kind worldwide to feature a coater and a lengthy delivery extension.

It joined a Mitsubishi UV press that has been running waterless since 1998.

Prior to pressing the buttons on the two Genius presses, Inplastor's total annual output came to just short of 85 million card and non-card products.

Those included 15 million cards in Strangnas alone.

In 2004 Xponcard doubled the volume of SIM cards it could produce.

The Genius 52 UV waterless and keyless offset machine uses UV inks and has optional UV coating for what KBA described as a modest capital outlay.

The addition of a coater enables the press to deliver a level of gloss that allows the company to dispense with the need for the mirror gloss of offline laminating, which is much less cost-effective.

Environmental considerations play a role and the presses' keyless inking units are claimed to eliminate the need for fount solution, which favours ISO 14000 accredited enterprises like Inplastor.

However, the main reason for choosing that feature was that it supports problem-free printing on as wide a range of synthetic substrates as possible, according to KBA.

Inplastor's managing director, Hakan Kindstrom, said: "We wanted to be able to print even more plastic cards cost-effectively than had previously been the case, but even after tests extending over 12 months, none of the conventional sheetfed offset presses from the manufacturers we contacted was capable of working to our specifications.

But at the Messe Cartes in Paris we saw the prototype of a Genius 52 UV press with coater.

Its capabilities and ease of operation were just what we were looking for." Kindstrom decided to install a straight forward five-colour version at the Strangnas plant at the earliest opportunity and his preferred configuration, with coater and long delivery extension, to allow the coating to spread uniformly prior to UV curing, in Motala at a later date.

With such an expensive type of substrate the smaller format (360mm x 520mm or 14" x 20.5") is no drawback, whilst the low waste rate (a maximum of 10 sheets) and optimum use of the sheet size help to keep costs down, added KBA.

Inplastor is maintaining its screen printing capabilities, both for coating prior to lamination and for printing with highly pigmented special-effect inks.

In KBA's opinion, that would indicate that the Genius 52 UV may well prove to be an attractive proposition for silk-screen printers who are looking for new lines of business and already have experience in UV print production, or possibly advertising agencies wishing to build up their own production facilities for promotional materials.

According to KBA, whilst most plastic printing plants can only print one or two of the most common types of plastic, Inplastor has in-depth experience in direct printing on 15 different types of synthetic substrates, including linoleum.

The company is continuously developing new product lines by combining screen or offset printing (including reverse printing on transparent materials) with embossing, die-cutting, vacuum forming, laminating, gluing, welding and other finishing techniques.

In its work with clients, Xponcard designers give rise to some extraordinary ideas that can be implemented with much greater flexibility and more cost-effectively now that the offset department has been reinforced by the two KBA-Metronic presses.

Ake Larsson and Lawrence Sullivan established the business in a Stockholm garage in 1957.

They started by adding plastic inserts to key-rings and fobs.

When they relocated from Stockholm to Motala in 1965 the two founders expanded in to direct printing on plastic using a screen-printing press and the first offset press for that purpose in the whole of Europe, said KBA.

In 1980 Inplastor was acquired by an investment group and in 1991 taken over by the Graphium group.

In 1993 ID card manufacturer ID Kort, based in Strangnas, joined the group.

The paper-printing division was spun off and the group renamed Xponcard.

Today Inplastor is a full subsidiary of the Xponcard group, which has since gone public.

In the course of time the group expanded its plastic-printing capabilities and the range of applications it could support for product promotion to address the specialised and diverse demands of a client base that embraces banks, mobile telephone network operators, ID specialists, public authorities and retail chains.

Within the Xponcard group Inplastor's Strangnas plant, with 20-plus employees, specialises in bank cards, whilst the Motala operation, with 90 staff, prints other cards plus non-card products such as point-of-sale materials, utility items and informational literature.

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