GEW EOS — Making UV Curing Intelligent · Rob Rae
GEW has powered UV curing systems for decades, but with EOS the company is taking a significant step forward — turning the curing system itself into an increasingly intelligent and connected part of the press.
At Labelexpo Americas in Chicago, Wayne Beckett meets Rob Rae from GEW to take a first look at EOS, the company’s completely redesigned power and control platform that will gradually replace the established RHINO system.
The lamps themselves may look familiar, but what happens behind them is very different.
With EOS, GEW introduces intelligence directly into the lamp system. Individual lamps can be serialized and carry information about operating hours, switching cycles, reflector life, performance, and other telemetry — giving converters and OEMs significantly more insight into how their curing systems are actually being used.
And that data is becoming increasingly valuable.
Press manufacturers can integrate EOS deeply into their control environments, retrieve diagnostics and energy data, and potentially combine curing data with broader production information from the press. For converters, this opens opportunities to better understand uptime, energy consumption, maintenance requirements, and overall equipment performance.
For OEMs, flexibility is another major part of the story.
GEW can supply everything from a complete curing system with cabinets, cooling, fans, and HMI through to little more than the power supply, cable, and lamp — allowing machine manufacturers to decide how deeply they want to integrate the technology themselves.
Rob describes it as Flexible Power. Intelligent Curing.
EOS also marks another major change for GEW: the company is bringing production of the new platform in-house. A new 5,000-square-meter manufacturing facility represents a significant investment and gives GEW greater control and knowledge over one of the most critical technologies in its portfolio.
In this INKISH film, Wayne Beckett talks with Rob Rae about EOS, intelligent UV curing, telemetry, energy data, OEM integration, IoT, and why the next generation of curing technology is increasingly about much more than simply turning a lamp on and off.
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Wed September 16th
Grand Rapids Label — 142 Years Old, Still L...
Grand Rapids Label has been in business for 142 years. That means the company has obviously done quite a few things right. But for President Bill, respecting that history doesn't mean protecting everything the company has always done. It means understanding what made Grand Rapids Label successful — while continuously challenging how the business can become better. Bill became the first president from outside the founding family just three years ago, and today he is helping prepare Grand Rapids Label for its next chapter, where data, automation, digital production, AI, and increasingly sophisticated software become important tools alongside the knowledge and experience of its people. One of those investments is CERM. And the road to CERM wasn't completely straightforward. Grand Rapids Label had previously selected another major MIS platform, but during implementation the management team came to a difficult conclusion: it wasn't the right solution. So they stopped. Starting again wasn't easy, but the experience also gave the company a much clearer understanding of what it actually needed from an MIS partner. With CERM, Grand Rapids Label took a phased approach. First, focus on what absolutely has to work. Then build from there. That is particularly important for a company heavily involved in automotive and direct food-contact applications, where regulations, certifications, traceability, supply chains, and customer requirements leave little room for disruption. Today, CERM is becoming much more than an administrative system. Combined with Power BI and production technology, the data is being used by cross-functional teams throughout Grand Rapids Label to continuously identify opportunities for improvement — whether that means reducing order-entry time, improving estimating, optimizing press utilization, or finding smarter ways of producing work. Those teams meet every week. The objective isn't simply to collect more data. It is to turn data into better decisions. And Bill sees another important consequence: good data can allow management to decentralize decision-making. Give people trustworthy information, establish the right guardrails, and employees can make more decisions themselves without being micromanaged. That also changes how the ROI of an MIS should be considered. Unlike a printing press, where productivity and return can often be calculated relatively directly, the value of an MIS appears throughout the organization — in faster processes, better costing, higher utilization, improved profitability, stronger decision-making, and ultimately in the culture of the company. In this INKISH film, Morten B. Reitoft talks with Bill about 142 years of Grand Rapids Label, becoming the company's first president from outside the family, lessons from an MIS implementation that didn't work, the move to CERM, Power BI, continuous improvement, AI, and why technology should ultimately give people more freedom to make better decisions. Because staying successful for 142 years doesn't mean doing things the same way for 142 years.