Italian label printer Grafiche Quartana has chosen UV Ray for a hybrid curing solution on its Omet iFlex label press for the production of high-quality food, wine, and cosmetic labels. Installed were UV Ray’s Atom UV mercury and MaxLED water-cooled LED lamps.

“LED curing systems were mounted on the machine inline with energy savings, but also for their reliability,” says Marco Quartana, owner of Grafiche Quartana. “We chose to mount UV Ray lamps from the beginning, as we find they are a streamlined company with an advanced technical product that reflects the customer’s requirements and provides a customized product when necessary.

“In our case, the system fits well with the high performance of the Omet iFlex, which is among the most advanced in the industry. It is a 360-format, 8-color flexo press with a reversing bar, cold foil, and inline diecutting with rotary cylinders with 100% Omet manufactured accessories which we installed in July 2023,” he adds.

Grafiche Quartana is a family-owned business based in Matera with 40 employees and a 2,000 square meters label production facility, of which 300 square meters are dedicated to offices for all graphic design and prepress activity.

Alberto Maiano, CEO of UV Ray, explains the advantages of installing water-cooled UV LED lamps on Grafiche Quartana’s Omet iFlex press: “Water-cooled LED technology is well-suited to Omet’s single-pass flexo presses. Combined with the iFlex print quality, it allows for the best results in every respect – especially register accuracy even when printing on sensitive and difficult materials like thermal paper or plastic films such as clear-on-clear.

“Furthermore, there is no heating of the press or its parts, including the die that collects all the material temperature at the end of the press. The fast LED startup time also results in ease and repeatability of jobs. Water cooling is essential for each of the items I mentioned earlier, as it allows the material contrast to always be at a constant temperature throughout the day and keeps the LED in perfect working order,” adds Maiano. “As the LED is a critical electronic component, it bases all its effectiveness on very little thermal control. This is why we have carefully chosen the construction materials of our LEDs, precisely to achieve the highest possible dissipation for a very high efficiency.”