In Tribute
Hans Ulland
Emeritus FounderPrint UV Conference
Co-founder of the Print UV Conference and of Air Motion Systems — remembered for the friendships he built, the UV and LED UV businesses he helped advance, and a conference designed so printers could lift each other.
Remembered
A founder whose spirit still fills the room
Hans Ulland passed away on November 8, 2024, after an aggressive battle with pancreatic cancer. He was fifty-six. Print UV — and the wider community of UV, LED UV and special effects printers he spent a career serving — lost a co-founder, a connector and a friend.
The conference he helped invent was never meant to be “just another show.” It was built as a peer exchange: printers teaching printers, suppliers in the conversation rather than parking on a trade-floor island, and relationships that compound year after year. That design still defines Print UV today — continuous since 2008, aside from the pandemic years when the industry paused with everyone else.
Print UV is proud to name Hans Ulland its Emeritus Founder. His energy lives on in the room — and through the ongoing involvement of his family in the Print UV conference series.
In the Industry
Air Motion Systems, LED UV, and access for more printers
With his then business partner Steve Metcalf, Hans co-founded Air Motion Systems (AMS) — a North American innovator and manufacturer of UV curing systems for the graphic arts. AMS grew into one of the most prolific UV technology companies of its era, and later — after combining with Baldwin Technology’s UV and IR divisions in 2017 — continued as AMS Spectral UV.
Hans and his partners helped bring LED UV curing out of the realm of only the highest-end packaging operations and into commercial print and beyond. Steve Metcalf recognized the potential of LED as a way to produce the UV spectrum at drupa in 2006; together they pushed AMS to integrate LED chips into industrial curing systems when commercial product was still scarce. Cooler, cleaner, more efficient curing — and the business cases that came with it — spread through the shops and relationships Hans invested in one conversation at a time.
Beyond the machines, colleagues remembered the friendships. Hans treated printers, suppliers and fellow travelers as peers worth his time — including late-night and weekend calls when a press or a customer needed an answer. Those relationships — personal and professional — are how UV ideas actually moved: a recommendation over dinner, a problem solved in a hallway, a shop that tried LED UV because someone they trusted had already made it work.
Founding Print UV
A conference designed differently — starting in 2008
Hans Ulland and Steve Metcalf founded the Print UV Conference in 2008 to advance the conversation — and the access — around UV innovation. The goal was practical: put the people who run UV and LED UV presses in one room with the people who build the systems, inks, coatings and special effects behind them, and let the exchange compound.
Nearly two decades on, that heritage is the reason Print UV still feels unlike a conventional trade event. The format privileges peer teaching, unhurried conversation and a program dense enough to repay the trip — UV curing, LED UV, special effects and high-value print, now with practical AI woven through the same rooms.
“Our vision was to create more than just another conference, but a cutting edge information exchange for the UV print industry where attendees bring immeasurable value to each other.”
The Ullee Award
Named for Hans — awarded for lasting impact
At Print UV 2025, the Print UV Association Board of Advisors unveiled the conference’s first award: the Ullee Award for UV Printing Excellence, with a special dedication to Hans Ulland. His life and work were honored and celebrated in the same room where the community he helped build still gathers — with his family present in that moment and still part of the Print UV story.
The name itself is a deliberate blend of Ulland and Lee into Ullee— Hans’s family name joined with the maiden name of his wife, Kristin Lee. Kristin was a steadfast supporter through Hans’s professional and entrepreneurial years, and naming the award with her Lee recognizes the devotion — and the real sacrifices — she and their family made while Hans helped popularize UV printing. He was known to take calls at all hours, on weekends and on vacation, from customers, suppliers and colleagues alike, because that is how he made the dream real.
The Ullee is given to a company or individual whose professional life has had the greatest impact on the growth of UV technologies and applications. It celebrates the passion, innovation and generosity Hans embodied: serious about the craft of UV, LED UV and special effects printing, and genuinely invested in other printers’ success.
Read the 2025 archive record of the unveiling: The Ullee Award — Print UV 2025.
What Continues
The exchange he imagined still runs
Print UV remains the peer-oriented conference Hans and Steve Metcalf set in motion: UV and LED UV innovation, special effects and high-value print, and practical intelligence shared among people who make those businesses better. His founder’s challenge still stands — one actionable idea, one lasting connection, repaid many times over.
“Just a single, actionable idea is all it takes to make attending the PRINT UV conference worthwhile. And the time spent networking with colleagues, peers and friends (old and new alike) for a few days in a relaxed setting in Las Vegas is priceless.”
Learn more about the conference he co-founded, or revisit his 2022 conversation with Warren Werbitt from the news archive.
Stay Close
Get 2027 updates.
Registration for Print UV 2027 is not open yet. Join the updates list for program news — including how the Ullee Award continues in 2027 — as the conference takes shape.