By Lisa Larson
Managing Editor

PHOENIX — Improved quality is the major goal in the continuing evolution of newspapers in the United States, and one way to achieve that goal is with the use of high-quality inks.

The use of ultraviolet inks has up to this point been confined to the packaging and commercial printing industries, but that may change in the near future, according to presentations given during the “New Light on UV” panel at SuperConference in January. Michael Kibler, president of Buffalo Newspress Inc., shared the results of tests the company has conducted using UV inks from Flint Ink Corp.

The Prime Systems UV lamps on Buffalo Newspress’ Goss Magnum press cure the UV ink on the web as it passes under the ultraviolet light. Buffalo Newspress conducted three trials of Flint’s UV inks, and found that while the cost of the UV ink itself is substantially more than conventional offset inks, there are cost savings in terms of capital investment and installation and energy costs in comparison to natural gas heatset printing.
Photo courtesy of Flint

Buffalo Newspress prints about 50 different weekly newspapers, as well as heatset and cold web offset newspaper inserts. The printer has five presses, and the UV ink tests were done on a traditional newspaper press — the Goss SSC Magnum. Testing of the inks began in August 2001 and consisted of three trials printing approximately half a million copies for each run. The last ink test was conducted during the first week of January just prior to SuperConference.

After each trial, Flint reformulated the ink to improve its performance on newsprint. Following the third trial, the ink now prints “trouble-free” on newsprint, Kibler said.

“The main reason that there were more trials than one was reformulating the UV ink to print well on newsprint. Newsprint … is a very linty sheet compared to the 70-pound coated currently used in the UV ink market. Most of the presses print on relatively high-quality paper compared to newspapers, so that was the transition that [Flint] had to make,” Kibler said.

Samples of grocery inserts printed using the UV inks were supplied to the audience during the session. The colors on the samples were very bright and “popped” off the page. The ink also did not rub off the paper, as conventional offset inks do, regardless of how much you rubbed your fingers on the page.

“The reason that we are testing the inks is to try to find a high-quality alternative to natural gas heatset for printing high-density, high-quality color on cold web offset press,” Kibler said.

Another benefit of the UV inks is that setoff is minimized because the ink is cured using ultraviolet light.

“There are some examples of some major daily newspapers that are having offsetting problems. Going UV eliminates that 100 percent,” Kibler said. “As newspapers look to upgrade, this is a perfect solution. You just have to measure the costs. When they start making lots of this ink, the cost will come down. Will it come down as low as [conventional ink]? Absolutely not. But there is room for [the cost] to come down, and we’re looking at that.”

While the cost of the UV ink itself is substantially more than conventional offset inks, there are cost savings realized in terms of capital investment, installation cost and energy costs in comparison to natural gas heatset printing.

According to Newspress’ calculations, the cost of a four-color set of conventional ink was $6.57 printing coldset (add 10 percent to the cost for heatset), or 87 cents per thousand copies. The cost of a four-color set of UV ink was approximately $32, or $6.84 per thousand copies.

However, the capital investment for UV inks is far less than natural gas heatset — between $50,000 and $100,000 — while the capital investment for natural gas, including ovens, chills, oxidizers and the silicone applicator/web guide was between $400,000 and $500,000.

The inks require that a UV lamp be installed on the press to dry the ink, a process called polymerization. Newspress is using a UV dryer from Prime Systems of Carol Stream, Ill. It spans the 35-inch web width and is about two feet long. Buffalo Newspress is using a wet trapping method, which means that the UV lamp is located in one place on the press and dries the ink only after the fourth color, as opposed to dry trapping, where the ink is dried after each color.

Another factor offsetting the cost of the ink is that the installation cost of natural gas is much higher — generally 10 percent to 20 percent of the investment cost, depending on if it’s a new or used installation. This expenditure could amount to $40,000 to $100,000, while the installation cost of UV ink and lamps is next to nothing, Kibler said in his presentation.

Energy costs are also much lower using the UV ink vs. natural gas heatset. The cost of electricity to run the bulbs and blowers on the UV dryers was one-third the cost of running the ovens, chills and oxidizer for natural gas heatset. The cost of the natural gas itself is $10 to $20 per hour, depending on rates. Of course, this cost is non-existent using UV inks.

Three substrates were used during each of the three trials: standard newsprint, supercalendared stock and 70-pound coated stock. Buffalo Newspress calculated ink mileage between the conventional offset and UV inks during the tests, and found that the conventional inks produced an average of 38 percent more copies per pound than the UV inks.

Although it did not gather empirical evidence on the ink mileage between the three different substrates, Kibler estimated that the supercalendared paper used about 25 percent less ink than printing on newsprint, and the 70-pound coated paper used 50 percent less ink. Newspress plans to continue testing the inks in order to gather hard data comparing the ink mileage on the different papers, as well as to see if a lower-cost UV ink can be used.

UV ink contains a pigment, just as conventional inks do, but other ingredients include monomers and oligomers, which react together with a photoinitiator. When the photoinitiator is exposed to ultraviolet light it starts a chemical reaction that links the monomers and oligomers together, drying the ink.

The photoinitiator is a very expense ingredient of the ink. The trials at Newspress were done with the UV dryer lamp on the medium setting, so additional tests will be done to see if less photoinitiator can be used in the ink with the lamp set on high, or to see if a lower-cost photoinitiator can produce the same results.

“We want to run the lowest-cost ink we possibly can that the UV lamps will dry the ink. That’s a major objective, because right now the ink is very expensive,” Kibler said. “We know we can … use a cheaper ink and still have the same result.”

Installation of the UV lamps and ink was a very easy process at Newspress. The fountain solution was compatible; the blanket wash was different, but cost the same; the Agfa newspaper plates they were using before were also used without baking for the UV inks. The rubber rollers on the press had to be changed to rollers with a different composition of rubber to be compatible with characteristics of the ink, but the new rollers cost about the same as the ones used previously.

Buffalo Newspress plans to continue using the UV inks in limited applications. The changeover time from regular cold web offset inks to the UV inks is about two to three hours, and that includes doing an extra good cleaning job, Kibler said.

Quite possibly as the cost of the UV inks comes down there will be greater market acceptance. Newspapers must weigh the cost of the ink against the tremendous quality improvements it provides. The testing of the UV inks in Buffalo is the first of its kind in the industry. The product is not currently commercially available for the newspaper market, but is a “concept ink” that Flint hopes other printers will be interested in testing and providing the company with feedback.

“I do believe there is a future for the product on cold web offset newspaper presses. I absolutely do,” Kibler concluded.