The Standard Group Makes Strategic Shift to LED-UV Printing
Scott Vaughn, CEO of The Standard Group.
LANCASTER and READING, Pa. - April 3, 2018 - The Standard Group, an enterprise print management and marketing logistics company based in central and eastern Pennsylvania, recently made a strategic shift to LED-UV technology for more brilliant printing results and while offering yet another environmentally friendly solution for its customers.
The Standard Group has a reputation for high-quality printing, but the company embraced this latest innovation in commercial printing to take its products to the next level. “LED-UV technology produces the most eye-catching and jaw-dropping results for commercial printing,” says Jim Rowland, COO for The Standard Group. He continues, “LED-UV is the best way to make a great first impression with print. With LED-UV, we’ll be able to produce excellent effects and visual impact for our customers. It’s the leading technology out there to elevate an ordinary catalog to a premium and luxurious one.”
For more than 30 years, UV technology has been used in the printing industry—but primarily with packaging, labels and business forms related-printing. With the introduction and popularity of new low-energy Light Emitting Diodes, or LED, major press manufacturers are now offering LED-UV for commercial offset presses.
“For years, we have considered changing to LED-UV to help us increase efficiency with our print production,” states Mike Gaidos, Pressroom Manager for The Standard Group. “In the past, we have had to wait up to 12 hours before sending our press sheets to our post-press for finishing and bindery. This is especially problematic for rushed jobs. Now with LED-UV, the drying is instantaneous.”
Gaidos elaborates, “We also love that LED-UV is giving us more versatility in the press room. We can now print on a wider range of substrates including plastics, transparencies and metallic sheets. We’ll be able to better match the creativity and brilliance of our design customers.”
Working with Wisconsin-based AMS Spectral UV, the leading provider of LED-UV technologies, The Standard Group has become one of the first companies in the world to convert a Heidelberg CX 102 printing press with Inpress Control to LED-UV.
“We have been using Prinect Inpress Control for years to automatically control color and registration on the fly,” notes Rowland. “The system scans every eighth page and makes adjustments to help us maintain maximum color consistency and print integrity. We needed AMS to find a way to convert our CX 102 press to LED-UV while retaining this automated ink management and critical color control. AMS had to custom-fit a set of LED-UV lamps, but the solution was absolutely perfect.”
The Standard Group chose to go with AMS Spectral UV’s X SeriesT LED-UV technologies because the company offers the industry’s highest curing intensities. “This award-winning LED-UV innovation by AMS will enable our company to run at the fastest press speeds with lower energy consumption than UV or traditional infrared lamps,” acknowledges Rowland.
A compelling factor for The Standard Group in switching to LED-UV is its ability to deliver the smallest carbon footprint in the print industry. LED-UV lamps are safer than traditional UV with mercury vapor lamps, and they last longer and are more energy efficient than H-UV or infrared lamps. But the biggest benefit is that LED-UV inks are 99.5 percent free of VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, and they do not release VOCs into the environment.
Scott Vaughn, CEO of The Standard Group, reinforces that “LED-UV printing is the future of print technology. Our interest in LED-UV was due to its ability to give us greater color fidelity and even more gorgeous results while increasing the productivity of our press by more than 30 percent. And being better for the environment really sealed the deal for us. We should have done this years ago.”
The preceding press release was provided by a company unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions.
