Infrared Cassette

Description

The cassette feature is standard on all GEW lampheads. It allows all the major internal parts to be removed on one quick-release slide-out assembly for quick changing of lamps and ease of maintenance, significantly reducing press downtime.
A range of cassettes are available to suit different applications, which can be quickly interchanged with each other as required.

Infrared cassette

The label printing market widely uses water-based inks and varnishes, which require hot air dryers to evaporate the water content, leaving the residual pigment on the web. The increasing use of UV inks and varnishes means printing machines may need to accommodate drying for both UV and water-based coatings. On certain machines this means re-webbing when switching between water-based and UV processes, or in some cases removing the hot air dryers altogether.
To solve this, GEW have developed a cassette-based IR system, which simply slides into the lamp housing in place of the UV cassette and operates using the same control technology.

Figure 1. Typical infrared cassette. 1. IR lamps 2. Electrical connections

Key Benefits

• IR cassette can be swapped with the UV cassette on compatible GEW systems
• GEW IR lamps tuned to selectively excite and evaporate only the water molecules in the ink
• More compact and energy-efficient than a large hot air box
• Evaporated water molecules extracted through integral exhaust duct
• No duplication of exhaust fans and ducting required

Applications

• Presses up to 43 cm / 17”
• Water-based inks
• Avoiding the need for separate web paths for UV and water-based ink drying
• Boosting performance of existing hot air dryers on the same web path