Patent ID: 8186272

Claim:
A method for drying printed ink on the face of a substrate material, comprising the steps of: providing a dryer having at least one variable output element for producing a plurality of dryer configurations; developing data correlating each of the dryer configurations with at least one print characteristic employed during print operations to determine a drying time associated with each, the at least one print characteristic is a taggant introduced into the printed ink; the taggant identifying the ink and its drying properties; and wherein the step of retrieving the print characteristic includes the step of sensing the taggant in the printed ink; storing the developed data in a memory storage device; obtaining the print characteristic associated with a particular print job and comparing the print characteristic with the developed data to define a dryer configuration; adapting the dryer to assume the dryer configuration based upon the print characteristic; and, drying the ink printed on the face of the substrate material.