The totally innovative SMART-DOSER is developed for dosing of conventional and low migration offset inks, and more specifically for UV offset inks. The system has up to 16 components as standard and can be expanded up to a maximum of 24. It allows individual, just-in-time, precise and reproducible creation of formula-based custom colors and spot colors.
Demand and market
The printing ink industry has long been waiting for dosing technology for UV offset inks, which is a rapidly growing sector in terms of revenue. It is still only possible to dose certain UV inks with conventional pump systems. Friction and shear on the product lead to a high local temperature increase. Due to this increase in temperature, the product can polymerize and block the pump and the dosing valve. This is the case regardless of whether a photoinitiator has already been added. The likely cause of this polymerization is the mixing of various varnishes in conjunction with the heat influx caused by the pump system and valve.
Tecos Bruhin AG is now launching an innovative, fully-automated and low-cost ink dosing system onto the market. This system guarantees full functionality with all types of UV offset inks, with or without a photoinitiator, and can be used both with concentrated basic components and print-ready inks.
There are many areas of use for the SMART-DOSER, which is an interesting solution for printing houses, printing ink manufacturers and retailers of printing inks who mix inks in-house. Even for smaller companies with an ink consumption of approx. 15 TPY, the basic model could pay for itself. The SMART-DOSER can, of course, also be used for special applications, for example dosing pigment pastes and raw materials in the broadest range of industries.
Benefits for the customer
Customer benefits are the focus of all of our developments. The SMART-DOSER impresses customers with the following features:
- High dosing and repeat accuracy
- Fully-automated dosing with record keeping
- Error minimization, as no human error
- No decanting of base materials from the supply container
- Reduced storage space and thus reduced storage costs
- Elimination of press returns
- Savings on residue and waste ink disposal
- Reduced labor costs
These advantages over conventional ink mixing have been demonstrated in practice. Depending upon ink consumption and calculation method, it is possible to achieve an ROI within a very short time period.
Design
Base materials are extracted from the supply containers of 2.5 kg vacuum cans, 10 – 25 l pails and 200 l drums. The containers can be of steel or plastic. An innovative pump system carefully delivers low to high viscosity products to the multi-level dosing valve without product heating.
The product can be efficiently filled into the can at a fast rate, slow rate and drop by drop. The very precise weighing scales for 0.5 kg up to 10 kg batches run on a linear unit to the respective valve position and after all components have been dosed it returns to their initial position. Even small quantities of < 2 g can be easily and precisely dosed.
The highly user-friendly system is easy to operate. The PC-controlled system with Windows 10 based software can be supplemented with various add-on modules, for example batch tracing, recipe management, interface to a color matching system and ERP system.