Getting Your KTK Oval Printer Back Up to Speed
If you’re looking to replace the IR lamps in your KTK oval printer, you already know that just buying a tube that “fits the length” isn’t enough. If you get the electrical side wrong, you’re looking at blown fuses or—even worse—cold spots that leave your ink tacky and your prints ruined. Here is how to actually do a 1:1 swap without the headache. It’s all about the power We build our lamps to mirror the exact wattage and voltage of the original KTK specs. Why? Because if you drop a low-voltage lamp into a high-voltage circuit, you’ll fry the filament in a few hours. It’s that simple. We obsess over the ohms to make sure the heat stays steady from one end of the tube to the other. Now, higher wattage means your ink cures faster, but it also puts more pressure on your power supply. Just double-check that your transformers can handle that initial surge when the lamps first kick on. The build quality (and why it matters) These aren’t flimsy bulbs. We use heavy-wall quartz glass so they don’t crack when you’re cycling them on and off all day. Then there’s the fit. We stick to standard R7s or SK15 connectors because they actually lock into place. A loose connection is a nightmare—it causes arcing, which can literally melt your housing. We also fill these with halogen gas. This lets us crank up the filament temperature without wearing out the glass, pushing the heat into a short-wave spectrum that punches through ink layers much faster. Swapping them out The actual install is a breeze. Pull the old tube, slide the new one in, and wire it up. Since the physical footprint is identical, you won’t have to mess around with your reflector brackets or bend any metal. One quick tip: these short-wave lamps hit hard. They concentrate heat intensely. If your conveyor is moving too slowly, you might scorch your material. Just keep an eye on your line speed and tweak it until the heat flux feels right.