Mumbai-based trade shop, Numex Blocks, became the first in Asia to invest in Shine LED Lamp Kits, innovated by Miraclon. Owner Nitin Patel made the final decision to invest in Shine LED Lamps to retrofit two of his exposure units at drupa 2024. He says, “The faster exposure times, better plate consistency, reduced waste and obvious cost benefit of not having to replace the two exposure units with new ones, made it an easy decision.”
The company has, over the years, continuously invested in new, leading-edge technologies to ensure it keeps its competitive advantage as a leading flexo-focused trade shop. “We like to keep abreast of the latest technology to ensure we keep growing. When Miraclon, who we’ve been enjoying a long, consultative relationship with, introduced us to Shine LED Lamps, I was very excited about the easy path it offered us to simply and quickly retrofit our existing fluorescent devices with LED lamps instead of having to make a significant investment in new ones.”
He continues, “The investment will also deliver a good range of sustainability and productivity benefits: we’ll be able to significantly cut exposure times by around 20%, which allows for big energy savings!” The Shine LED improves energy savings by perhaps as much as 7 or 8 times and has productivity benefits in the way it works for trade shops. It improves the consistency of results for digital flexo plates and even slightly for the LAMs-based NX plates.
The Shine LED Lamp Kit is Miraclon’s innovative solution to providing fluorescent users with a simple, low-cost route from inconsistent fluorescent exposure to the multiple advantages of LED technology. Approximately a dozen Shine retrofit kits were purchased at drupa by Indian customers at drupa 24. Creative Graphics headquartered in Noida purchased five Shine kits for its units across the country, and Digiflex of Hyderabad purchased one.
By utilizing customers’ existing fluorescent exposure frames for a fraction of the cost of a new LED exposure unit, users benefit from consistent, predictable intensity over a much longer operating life (up to 5,000 hours compared to 800 hours for fluorescent tubes), faster exposures, and enhanced sustainability performance. These features won the Shine LED Lamp Kit a unique double at this year’s FTA Excellence in Flexography Awards — for both Sustainability and Technical Innovation. Interestingly, the new Shine retrofit works for all types of flexo digital imaging – not just Flexcel NX solutions, and has been purchased by Innovative Flexotech in Ahmedabad, a manufacturer of flexo plate exposing frames, for onward supply to one of its customers.
This article was published on 4 June. Republished with added information.
