PIA/GATF is the world's largest graphic arts trade association, serving the interests of more than 12,000 member companies and representing an industry with more than $161 billion in revenue and 1.2 million employees. Inaugurated in 1978 to foster awareness and understanding of advanced graphic arts technology, the annual InterTech Technology Award honours excellence in innovative technology for the graphic communications industry. The nomination criteria stipulate that the technology be recently developed, proven in industrial application and expected to have a major impact on the graphic communications industry over the next five years.

“We are very proud to receive the highly-acclaimed PIA/GATF InterTech Award for the Genius 52UV – the only offset press to gain such a distinction this year,” says Ralf Sammeck, president and CEO of KBA North America’s sheetfed division in Williston, Vermont. “Since its introduction in September 2005 at the Print trade fair in Chicago, sales have been booming. Last year, our Rapida 205 81-inch sheetfed press, the largest in the world, won the InterTech award. We believe that being a two-year back-to-back recipient shows the industry that KBA is a leader in the technological field of printing and that we keep introducing new innovative equipment.”

The compact Genius 52UV is the world’s only waterless, keyless UV sheetfed offset press and has the widest stock range in the B3 (20in) format: from 100gsm to 0.8mm (60lb to 32pt), from paper and board to plastics such as lenticular, ABS, PVC and PC. Its waterless technology guarantees reliable reproducibility and a brilliant offset quality with no ghosting whatsoever. The press prints in four or five colours with UV curing inks that harden rapidly and completely, thus allowing further processing immediately afterwards.

It is the satellite cylinder arrangement with a central impression cylinder which lends the Genius 52UV its small footprint and distinctive appearance. Since there is no sheet transfer during impression, registration is always 100 per cent, so costly materials can be printed with a minimum of waste. Automatic plate changing and a control console with a touchscreen display that can be slid from one end of the press to the other permit one-man operation and fast job changes. A Genius 52UV press with a coater, UV dryer and extended delivery demonstrated its lenticular printing capabilities at Ipex in Birmingham and Grafitalia in Milan.

Printers who have already installed the press are full of praise. “One of the biggest benefits of the Genius 52UV is that it just keeps running without having to wash-up,” says Bob Gay, president of The Mallard Press, an offset and digital printing company in Lombard, Illinois, that installed the press in December 2005. “We don’t need to wash up the press every night because the ink remains stable and only dries with UV light rays. We can go weeks without washing up the press until we need to put in a PMS colour. It only takes ten minutes and ten sheets or less to produce an image that is up to colour and will remain that same colour throughout the press run. No ghosting, no ink and water balance issues, no drying problems, no traditional press problems to deal with. We’re able to capitalize in the growth of short-run quick-turn colour work along with the ability to print on any substrate. We just load the plates, check register, and print!”

Custom Plastic Card Company, a full-service printer and producer of custom plastic cards located in Pompano Beach, Florida, was the first firm in the US to install a Genius 52UV press. The 100-employee firm, established in 1983, is a leader in its field, catering to a wide variety of clients in the US, South America, the Caribbean and Europe. “The KBA Genius 52UV press gives us the ability to print large volumes of jobs on .030 mil plastic that we couldn’t do before,” says company president Tony Gardner. “On our other presses, we could only print 50,000 to 100,000 per day; now, with the Genius 52UV, we can print a half a million or more in one day.”

“The Genius 52UV is designed with only one gripper bar,” says Matt Bayer, the Genius 52UV press operator at Custom Plastic Card. “That allows the press to produce higher detail and perfect registration throughout the press run.” Customer files are download from an FTP site, dropped into templates in Macs then sent computer-to-plate to the press.

Crawford Industries, Crawfordsville, Indiana, is well-known in North America for its graphic quality polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) sheet for information and consumer packaging, advertising and promotional products and other graphic quality applications. The firm’s nationwide clientele includes such household names as Xerox, Verizon Wireless, Cingular, IBM, Chrysler, Nordstrom, and L’Oréal. “We felt that we could get a higher-quality image using an offset method rather than screen printing,” explains Earl Guinter, Crawford’s manager of sales and marketing. “Our customers were giving us more detailed images to produce and jobs with shorter makeready times and faster throughput. The Genius 52UV gives us much better image quality. Plus, it has the capability of producing short-run jobs with very low waste and excellent margins. In the past, we’d produce a two-colour screen printed product; now with the Genius 52UV we can produce a full-colour flood print with rich vibrancy. When we lay down ink on polyethylene white, the image really pops.”

www.gain.net

www.customplasticcard.com

www.mallardpress.com

www.crawford-industries.com

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