Paraguayan prepress trade shop Sellos has become the first in the country to upgrade its plate exposure unit with a Shine LED Lamp Kit, innovated by Miraclon. The long-time FLEXCEL NX Technology user worked closely with Miraclon’s local channel partner, Lumila, to finalize the investment and get the LED lamps installed.

Francisco Cardozo, Sello president, comments, “The changeover to LED exposure further enables us to help our customers adopt modern flexo practices and maximize the on-press benefits that FLEXCEL NX Plates deliver. It also massively improved our own productivity and sustainability targets, while uniformity across the plate is better too.”

Cardozo elaborates on the productivity improvements his team reported as soon as the Shine LED Lamp Kit installation was complete, saying, “With no preheating required, the waiting time before exposure has been eliminated. The exposure process is now also 30% – 40% faster. This immediately confirmed to me that the Shine LED Lamp was a sound investment for us.”

Because it utilizes customers’ existing fluorescent exposure frames, the Shine LED Lamp Kit can be retrofitted in the field in a few hours. Miraclon says that for a fraction of the cost of a new LED exposure unit, users benefit from consistent, predictable intensity over a much longer operating life (more than 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 the 2024 FTA Excellence in Flexography Awards in North America, winning top awards for both Sustainability and Technical Innovation, and more recently the German FTA (DFTA) Sustainability Technology Award.