Bruckmuehl, Germany - Elanders Germany, the leading book-printer has recently put into commercial operation an adphosNIR^®-dryer booster-upgrade for their HP T230 inkjet printer giving them significant production advantages. 

When in production, todays Drop-On-Demand inkjet presses often show significantly reduced printing performance when compared to the manufacturer’s specified maximum printing speed. This is frequently due to insufficient drying and/or remaining ink smearing when printing onto coated and/or glossy stocks. Another characteristic often found due to the DOD dryer installations is over-drying of the substrate resulting in brittle, difficult to handle paper and in waviness (cockle & curl) in the final product. 

The adphosNIR^®-booster-dryer modules at Elanders have been integrated immediately behind the last printhead on each side of the T230, in front of the existing original HP combined IR/hot air dryer. Due to the (now enhanced) drying power and due to the possible removal of the (previously remaining) humectants (e.g. glycol), print production can now occur onto coated stocks at full ink coverage and full printing speed in the Elanders production line with its integrated inline book finishing section. 

For all uncoated media, a purely adphosNIR^®-dryer operation is possible, without needing to turn on the existing IR/hot air drier. 

When operating these printers using the adphosNIR^®-booster dryer, a much reduced thermal heating of the paper occurs (keeping it below 60 °C!) and therefore little (or no) “drying out” is seen (moisture ~4.5 – 5.0 % at 5 % ambient moisture), thus completely flat printed products are produced. This removes the need for remoistening and any significant operation/reliability enhancements in the post-printing inline-finishing process. 

The additional energy savings with the purely adphosNIR^®-dryer operation scenarios here are enormous, giving greater than 60% savings.

This adphosNIR^®-dryer booster upgrade takes less than two days to completely install and can even be done over the weekend in existing T2xx presses. The exception to this is where they have a MICR printing configuration, where alternative configurations must be discussed. 

The adphosNIR^®-dryer upgrade can also be fitted to all existing T3xx; T4xx printing presses, again even over the weekend if necessary.