Preparing for the Inkjet Conference 2015

Making progress in half-tone screening technology – our samples are ready to display!

We’re really looking forward to the Inkjet Conference in Düsseldorf next week. Global Graphics’ CTO, Martin Bailey, will be speaking at the conference and focusing on the problems inkjet vendors have encountered when printing on high-speed inkjets, particularly with regard to optimum image quality and droplet placement.

With this in mind, for the last few months we’ve been working with a number of inkjet press manufacturers to develop entirely new half-tone screening technology for presses that can vary the amount of ink delivered in any one location on the media. We’ve just received our sample prints to show you at the Conference and we’re really pleased with the results – you can see the improvement immediately.

The samples show typical ‘before and after’ scenarios: The ‘before’ samples are quite noisy and show mottle and puddling; the ‘after’ samples, printed with Global Graphics screening technology, show much smoother gradients where we manage the transition of droplet size in multi-level heads.

We have also prepared sample prints showing what the output looks like with no tuning on: They show noise and steps in gradients for multi-level output, then we demonstrate what happens when we use transition points of drop size when using inks such as white, orange and violet in the colour spectrum.

Look out for Martin at the Conference and drop by our table in the IJC Networking Arena to see the prints for yourself.

If you are interested in the benefits of half-tone screening on high-speed inkjets and would like to join our research programme, watch our video here for more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNrSbb46efg.

Alternatively, contact Martin Bailey directly: martin.bailey@globalgraphics.com

Read Martin’s abstract here:
http://www.globalgraphics.com/company/events/#ijc

New Flexo screens give premium print quality

HXMFlexo screens
Bump up curves in Harlequin’s new flexo screens help pre-press operators achieve smooth gradations even in high-key images.

Our Harlequin product team has launched a set of hybrid screens specially developed to give premium quality in flexo work.

The screens address the well-known issues of how to achieve high-quality in the highlight areas of images, such as tones close to white or skin tones, and how to print those areas with smooth gradations.

“We used the Harlequin Cross Modulated™ screens as the basis for development and have expanded the number of screens and included a mechanism to auto select calibration that goes with a particular screen,” comments Martin Bailey, CTO, Global Graphics.

“With the new Harlequin Cross Modulated Flexo (HXMFlexo) screens you can produce high-quality graphical objects by selecting from a wide choice of screen resolutions, rulings and dot sizes. Pre-press operators also now have the ability to bump up curves at the highlight end to compensate for flexo not being able to produce tones close to white clearly, so you can achieve smooth gradations even in high-key images.”

The new screens are the result of working with our OEM partners in the flexo market who have used the Harlequin RIP for years and we’ve been able to take input from a variety of vendors to fine tune our plans.

HXMFlexo works with the latest editions of the Harlequin RIP.

Free webinars on “Do PDF/VT Right”

For those who missed it at PODi and XPlor, I’m presenting two free webinars this week on “Do PDF/VT Right: how to make problem free files for variable data printing”, hosted by Dscoop University – the Digital Solutions Cooperative. You don’t have to be a member of Dscoop, nor an HP Indigo user to join.

If you’d like to sign up to hear me talk through the guide, download the “Top 5 tips” poster, and have the chance to ask any questions, please register using the following links:

EMEA: Tuesday, October 21, 1pm – 2pm CET: http://dscoop.org/p/cm/ld/fid=971

North America: Thursday, October 23, 11:00 a.m – 12:00 p.m. CST: http://dscoop.org/p/cm/ld/fid=967

The guide itself is, of course, still available at http://www.globalgraphics.com/doPDFVTright/

#dopdfvtright