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Issue Date: February 2001

Printing centre makes its mark on the world

1 February 2001

One of today's fastest-growing industries has gained a second research facility that makes the UK one of the two leading nations in the field of printing and coating.
The new centre provides important capabilities for developing printing and coating, an industry now ranked the fifth-largest in the UK.
Based at Swansea in South Wales, the Welsh Centre for Printing and Coating is ranked on a par with the Rochester Institute of Technology in the US, long acknowledged as the world's leading authority on printing.
The picture shows one of the centre's major assets, a measurement machine that can calculate and display the thickness of ink deposits on different materials to an extraordinary degree of accuracy.
The screen shows a precise 3D 'model' of ink deposits being examined, revealing hills and valleys in the ink's surface to an accuracy of one-tenth of a nanometer - that is, one-tenth of a millionth of a millimetre.
This technique not only checks the quality, durability and depth of printings and coatings but it can also provide highly accurate predictions of ink consumption, vital information for an industrial printer planning a print run of millions of labels or wrappers for consumer goods, for example.
Known as a white-light interferometer, the machine can check the wear and integrity of the working faces of plates and engraved cylinders used in mass-produced printing and it can examine the ink profile produced.
Installed about three months ago, the interferometer exploits new UK-developed software and is already helping research centre staff to identify technical improvements that could bring major early benefits to industrial printers.
This and a range of other leading-edge equipment enables the Welsh Centre for Printing and Coating to focus on three priorities: fundamental research, developing emerging technologies and educating printing technologists from around the world.
"Printing and coating is a fast-expanding global business worth billions of dollars each year," explained Dr Tim Claypole, the centre's Director.
"It is also changing rapidly, with new techniques emerging for better quality and cheaper methods to print on ceramics, pottery, tin cans, plastics, alloys and an ever-widening range of exotic and everyday materials.
"Our work encompasses everything from developing better ways of printing medical sensors for checking blood-sugar levels through to helping the automotive industry develop more distinctive decorative trim and instrument faces."
With its international multidisciplinary team of students and teaching staff, the centre is also busy contributing to the work of the International Standards Organisation and the British Standards Institute.
Established with support from the Welsh Development Agency and European development funds, the Welsh Centre for Printing and Coating provides a unique service to strengthen one of Europe's foremost high-technology industries.
Welsh Centre for Printing and Coating
(0944) 1792 295214


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