As Bill Bonallo, president and CEO of 1ST America, correctly observes, "nowadays, nobody wants to wait for a sheet to dry off press." But, before the advent of UV (ultraviolet) curing as an alternative method of drying, that's what sheetfed offset printers typically had to do, even with the aid of offset spray powder and other traditional ink-setting techniques. The drying step began to grow less time-intensive with the introduction of on- and off-press UV curing systems in the 1960s, and that original technology still predominates among the energy-curing processes used by the printing industry. Roughly 10 years ago, curing by means of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as an alternative to mercury vapor lamps entered the market, giving printers more options for eliminating the drying bottleneck from their pressrooms.
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