Sun Chemical Extends Project 37 Line with Disc Decoration Solution for Duplicators

Sun Chemical is offering Project 37D, a single pass UV inkjet printer designed to offer CD/DVD duplicating companies an even more affordable digital system for the decoration of optical discs.

Project 37D complements its sister product, Project 37, which was launched in June 2006 to provide a similar digital print capability for higher-volume disc replicators.  However, this new version has been engineered to be more compact and economical to meet the requirements of the duplicating industry.

As well as offering an exceptionally low cost per disc, just €0.015 per unit or lower depending on image design, Project 37D is at least three times faster than its nearest inkjet competitor at high resolution, according to Robin McMillan, Sun Chemical’s marketing manager for industrial inks.  

The set-up process takes only a few seconds between jobs, making Project 37D the ideal system to achieve the profitable printing of up to 1,000 discs per hour.  Once printed and cured, Sun Chemical UV inkjet inks provide a durable, high-gloss finish, and are resistant to humidity or ambient conditions.  They do not require any post-press processing, such as varnishing.

“In addition to being much faster than competitors’ systems, this further enhancement to the Project 37 range demonstrates Sun Chemical’s commitment to the evolving requirements of this growing marketplace, which is responsible for printing an estimated 17 billion discs each year,” Mr. McMillan said. “It offers disc decorators the option of producing both short and long runs profitably, while enhancing the range of services they offer to customers.”

Project 37D achieves an apparent dpi of 800 using eight levels of greyscale.  The system has a compact footprint of 2600mm x 990mm x 1600mm, so can easily be installed in an office or digital pre-press environment.  It incorporates a unique fixed inkjet array using Xaar’s OmniDot piezoelectric, drop-on-demand heads.  The Project 37D system also negates the need for more complex screen printing and associated pre-press processes.  It uses pre-coated white recordable discs that are simply loaded onto high-capacity spindles, and the bespoke RIP and colour management technology offers photo-like print quality,  minimal ink usage, ‘right first time’ image reproduction and ease of use.

Both Project 37D and the larger Project 37 inkjet printers have been developed by Sun Chemical in association with Cambridge based specialist manufacturer Copytrax Technologies.