River Falls, WI -- Air Motion Systems | AMS UV recently recognized Adler Druck in Bad Elster, Germany, for its leadership and market success as the first production installation of an LED UV system on a sheetfed offset press anywhere in Germany. The company retrofitted its Ryobi 780 4 Color press with AMS's award-winning XP5 Series LED system in April of this year.

An award was presented by AMS and its German Distributor, GraphicTeam Gmbh, to Andreas and Andre Adler, the father and son team who run the family-owned printing firm, with additional recognition given at a ceremony at PRINT 13 in Chicago on September 10th to commemorate their achievements in the printing industry.

AMS also released a new YouTube video highlighting LED UV printing success on a Ryobi sheetfed offset press at Adler Druck in Germany. The video was first previewed at the first ever UV LED Printing Technology Seminar at PRINT 13 in front of a standing-room only audience.

In April, Adler went live with Germany's first production LED UV Sheetfed Offset Printing System, the AMS XP5 Series installed on a Ryobi 784. The company has since been making waves in the German print market with work recently highlighted in the German print magazine Grafische Palette.

According to Andre Adler, "the LED curing process started perfectly from the first sheet", and added "we are absolutely elated with the press productivity, substrate capability and business growth that the LED system has brought us."

Before the LED retrofit, Adler experienced lengthy waiting times for sheets to dry, and dealt with a large volume of spray powder that once coated everything in the pressroom to prevent sheet marking. In fact it was the spray powder and its associated issues that finally convinced them to take the step towards LED curing.

Since the LED press was put in production, "not only are sheets instantly dry on any kind of stock, the inks can be kept in the fountain overnight simplifying cleanup" said Adler. "What used to take 12 hours per day can now be done in 7. Our print quality and consistency is considerably higher, and our delivery time to customers has never been faster."

The color brilliance of LED inks is instantly detectable in several pieces done by Adler to illustrate the difference. The LED inks are richer in pigment and transfer more efficiently for higher yield. And because the inks are polymer-based, they do not require aqueous coating for protection.

Adler is not just able to print stunning images on coated and uncoated offset papers, but on non-porous PVC and PP plastic sheets allowing them to create new products for their customers. And with LED UV inks available from multiple manufacturers, the opportunity for additional process growth is virtually unlimited.

Perhaps most astonishing is that the press was not designed for a UV system, and could not easily have accommodated a mercury lamp system. The only press preparation required was changing the rollers to be compatible with hybrid chemistry. And the entire installation of the AMS LED UV system took less than a day.

"We are extremely proud of Adler Druck, their technology and process leadership, and the success they have achieved in the German print market switching to LED" said Steve Metcalf, President and CEO of AMS. "Printers such as Adler are truly creating the future enabled by a new generation of high quality, LED instant-dry offset printing - a vast opportunity, and have shown that the size of the printing operation or the press simply doesn't matter anymore in achieving success with UV".