CURING OF INKS USING UV LED

Abstract

Advances in technology have seen positive growth over past couple of years, for curing of inks in printing
industries. Conventional method of curing inks which uses mercury lamps or ultraviolet lamps is now being replaced by
ultraviolet LED (Light Emitting Diodes). UV-LED drying technology in printing is an energy-saving, environmentally
friendly drying technology. Compared with the traditional UV drying method, it can reduce 70% -90% of the power
consumption; In addition, the drying device does not produce ozone, no VOC (volatile organic matter) emissions. At
present, the technology has become a research hotspot in the printing area.
Drive circuit of UV-LED light source system is one of the key technologies of UV-LED drying equipment, as a
single UV-LED chip power is only a few watts, which can't meet the demands of drying power, it is necessary to form a
number of chips that integrated UV-LED light source system, which requires that the drive circuit has high stability in
order to improve the reliability and the service life of the drying device. In this modern technology UV inks are not dried,
but it is cured. As ultraviolet LED technology offers many advantages over conventional process, it is needed to be
implemented in printing industries. As this technology is in its initial stage it is going to be first implemented on label
printing industry. In this the UV lamp and UV LED curing time is carried out at different distances using UV inks. A
hardware model is prepared which uses controller that is used to control the intensity of UV LED. An intensity sensor is
placed close to LEDs which senses the level of intensity and sends the signal to the controller. Machine speed also plays
a role in setting the UV intensity. All these parameters are checked at regular interval and processed by controller.