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In the last 25 years development of UV curing inks has been
largely in the field of lithographic inks. Sheetfed in Europe
and sheet and web fed in the USA. This development has not been
without its problems, brought about because the raw materials
used in radiation cured systems are almost totally nonlithographic
in their nature. Every formulator who has worked
in this field will bear witness to the remarkable amount of
effort that has been applied to try to help radiation cured
systems lithograph successfully. If this process is so difficult
why not use an alternative process which does not involve the
mixing of ink and water on the printing plate? The development
of UV waterless (Toray) is still in its infancy and has been
hampered by the tendency of UV cured materials to attack the
printing plate.
At the moment it cannot be considered a viable option. Silk
screen inks have been available for some time and have now
reached a mature stage of development; however the process is not
capable of reaching the speeds required for lithography.
Practically this only leaves us with the options of flexography
and rotogravure. The major obstacle to the development of these
processes previously was the lack of availability of monomers or
diluents at a suitable viscosity to enable the process to work.
Although this is still largely the case, it is possible to avoid
these problems by adopting some innovative approaches. The
physical aspects of these will be discussed later in the paper.
Recently Arpeco Engineering developed a new narrow web printing
press.
Despite the fact that the ink was delivered through an anilox
roller onto a flexographic printing plate, the company felt that
the process was different enough to warrant a different
description and so described it as priiaographic — hence the title
of this paper.
