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How to integrate print into the Smart Factory

Join us at the Industrial Print Integration conference

It’s my first time at the Industrial Print Integration Conference; I’ve packed my suitcase and my passport is raring to go, glad to be out of the drawer after two years of hibernation. I’m looking forward to meeting new people in the industry and learning about the new developments in technology.

If you’re interested in integrating print into your smart factory, join me for my talk at 12.30pm on Wednesday, 18 May 2022. I’ll be explaining how you integrate inkjet into the Smart Factory with the help of fully automated software that connects to the rest of the production system via Industry 4.0 technologies like OPC UA, the open standard for exchanging information for industrial communication. I’ll also explain how you can build in capability so you can deliver everything from mass production to mass customization at the same cost as current print systems.

And if you want to know more, then come along to our booth A7. We’re going to be showing a demo of our SmartDFE™, which I think is pretty impressive. You can watch a snippet here:

SmartDFE is our smart software that drives an inkjet printing subsystem in a factory setting, including those printers used for ultra-high speeds and 300m per minute production rates! The demo shows what happens when you combine high-tech SCADA systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) with OPC UA to monitor and control virtual print subsystems via iPads. You can control them both inside and outside of your plant location so management always knows what’s happening without ever having be physically present.

If you haven’t registered yet, there’s still time: https://ipi-conference.com/register/delegate

I hope to see you there!

About the author

Ian Bolton

Ian Bolton, Product Manager, Direct
Ian Bolton, Product Manager – SmartDFE™ and Direct™

Ian Bolton is the product manager for SmartDFE™ and Direct™. He works with printer OEMs to break down barriers that might be preventing them from reaching their digital printer’s full potential. A software engineer at heart, Ian has a masters in Advanced Computer Science from the University of Manchester, and over 15 years’ experience developing software for both start-ups and large corporations, such as Arm and Sony Ericsson. He draws on this technical background and his passion for problem-solving to define and drive features and requirements for innovative software solutions for digital print.

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Speed and Scalability: two things to consider when choosing a RIP for your digital inkjet press

If you’re building a digital press, or a digital front end (DFE) to drive a digital press, you want it to be as efficient and cost-effective as possible. As the trend towards printing short runs and personalization grows, especially in combination with increasing resolutions, more colorants and faster presses, the speed and scalability of the raster image processor (RIP) inside that DFE are key factors in determining profitability.

For your digital press to print at speed you’ll need to understand the amount of data that it requires, i.e. its data rate. In this film, Martin Bailey, distinguished technologist at Global Graphics Software, explains how different stages in data handling will need different data rates and how to integrate the appropriate number of RIP cores to generate that much data without inflating the bill of materials and DFE hardware.

Martin also explains that your next press may have a much higher data rate requirement than your current one.

For more information about the Harlequin Core visit: www.globalgraphics.com/harlequin

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HP PageWide Industrial raises the bar with the Harlequin RIP

The HP T1190 digital inkjet press
The HP T1190 digital inkjet press

In this latest case study, Tom Bouman, worldwide workflow product marketing manager at HP PageWide Industrial, explains why the Harlequin RIP®, with its track record for high quality and speed and its ability to scale, was the obvious choice to use at the heart of its digital front end when the division was set up to develop presses for the industrial inkjet market back in 2008.

Today, the Harlequin RIP Core is at the heart of all the PageWide T-series presses, driving the HP Production Elite Print Server digital front end. Presses range from 20-inch for commercial printing, through to the large 110-inch (T1100 series) printers for high-volume corrugated pre-print, offering a truly scalable solution that sets the standard in performance and quality.

Read the full story here.

Further reading:

  1. Harlequin Core – the heart of your digital press
  2. What is a raster image processor 
  3. Where is screening performed in the workflow
  4. What is halftone screening?
  5. Unlocking document potential


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Harlequin Core – the heart of your digital press

Product manager Paul Dormer gives an insight into why the Harlequin Core is the leading print OEMs’ first choice to power digital inkjet presses in this new film.

A raster image processor (RIP), Harlequin Core converts text, object and image data from file formats such as PDF, TIFF™ or JPEG, into a raster that a printing device can understand. It’s at the heart of the digital front end that drives the press.

Proven in the field for decades, Harlequin Core is known for its incredible speed and is the fastest RIP engine available. It is used in every print sector, from industrial inkjet such as textiles and flooring, to labels and packaging, commercial, transactional, and newspapers.

As presses become wider, faster, and higher resolution, handling vast amounts of data, the Harlequin Core remains the RIP of choice for many leading brands including HP, Mimaki, Mutoh, Roland, Durst, Agfa and Delphax.

Further reading:

  1. What is a raster image processor 
  2. Where is screening performed in the workflow
  3. What is halftone screening?
  4. Unlocking document potential


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Farewell “Harlequin Host Renderer”, hello “Harlequin Core”

We’ve now been shipping the Harlequin Host Renderer™ (HHR) to OEMs and partners for over a decade, driving digital printers and presses. Back then Harlequin was our only substantial software component for use in digital front ends (DFEs), and we just came up with a name that seemed to describe what it did.

Since then our technology set includes a component that can be used upstream of the RIP, for creating, modifying, analyzing, visualizing, etc page description languages like PDF: that’s Mako™. And we’ve also added a high-performance halftone screening engine: ScreenPro™.

We’ve positioned these components as a “Core” range and their names reflect this: “Mako Core” and “ScreenPro Core”. We also added higher level components in our Direct™ range, for printer OEMs who don’t want to dig into the complexities of system engineering, or who want to get to market faster.

Harlequin is already part of Harlequin Direct™, and we’re now amending the name of the SDK to bring it into line with our other “Core” component technologies. The diagram below shows how those various offerings fit together for a wide range of digital printer and press vendors (please click on it for a better view).

So, farewell “Harlequin Host Renderer”, hello “Harlequin Core”.

Global Graphics Software product entry point diagram

Further reading:

1. What is a Raster Image Processor (RIP)

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Connecting print to the Smart Factory

This week WhatTheyThink launched its 2021 Technology Outlook – a resource guide designed for you to quickly learn about new innovations from industry analysts and thought leaders. It includes five technology focus areas: digital printing, labels & packaging, software & workflow, wide format & signage and textiles & apparel, and finishing.

As part of the software & workflow technology focus, David Zwang of WhatTheyThink chatted to our VP of products and services, Eric Worrall, about digital front ends (DFEs), the elements that comprise a DFE, and the recent launch of Global Graphics’ SmartDFE™, a complete single-source software and electronics stack that does everything from job creation through to printhead electronics, and a vital component in the smart factory of the future. Smart factories are designed to autonomously run the entire production process and this will include the print subsystems.

Watch it here:

Global Graphics Software's Eric Worrall talking about Smart DFEs
Global Graphics Software’s Eric Worrall talking about Smart DFEs

To find out more about the smart factory and the smart digital front end, visit our website.

 

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The Digimarc interview: Fast, efficient print production with variable data printing

The impact of poorly constructed PDF files on production schedules has increased as press resolution, colorant count, speed, and width rise – greatly increasing the data rate required to drive them.

This increase in data places additional demands on the processing power of the DFE and risks slowing down the digital press: a delay of half a second on every page of a 10,000-page job adds 90 minutes to the whole job, while for a job of a million pages an extra tenth of a second per page adds 24 hours to the total processing time.

In his guide: Full Speed Ahead – How to make variable data PDF files that won’t slow your digital press, Martin Bailey, distinguished technologist at Global Graphics Software, gives some technical recommendations as to how you can make sure that you don’t make a PDF file for a variable data job that will bring a digital press to its knees. It provides objective information for graphic designers, print buyers, production managers, press operators, owners of PSPs, and developers of digital presses and composition tools.

Martin has just released a second edition of the guide and in this film he talks about the updates to Digimarc‘s marketing communications manager, Rob Fay. Digimarc provides additional functionality to Global Graphics’ software platforms and is a sponsor of the guide.

Topics in the interview include:

  • The guide’s purpose and target audiences
  • Background on updates related to the standards PDF/X-6 and PDF/VT-3
  • Differences in the various VDP applications: traceability; trackability; and personalization
  • Recent improvements in DFE (digital front end) technology that are enabling more advanced VDP

Martin Bailey, CTO, Global Graphics Software, and Rob Fay of Digimarc

WATCH THE INTERVIEW HERE

DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE HERE

Further reading:

  1. What’s the best effective photographic image resolution for your variable data print jobs?
  2. Why does optimization of VDP jobs matter?

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Is your printer software up to the job? The impact of rising data rates on software evolved from traditional print processes

Direct™ product manager Ian Bolton explores the impact of using software that has evolved from traditional print processes to drive digital inkjet presses as they advance to print faster, in higher resolution, a wider variety of colors and applications. In particular, Ian focuses on the impact that rising data rates have on the workflow:

Digital press software evolved from traditional print processes has already reached its limit. Digital presses are becoming higher resolution – most are moving from 600 dpi to 1200 dpi, quadrupling the data. They’re also becoming deeper, with up to 7 drop sizes – and these drops are being made from a wider variety of colors. Digital presses are also becoming wider, up to 4 meters wide, and faster,  up to 1,000 feet per minute!

And what if you need to print where every item is different? For example, fully personalized – like curtains, flooring, wall coverings, clothing etc. All of these require software that can deliver ultra-high data rates.

Let’s look at how those data rates scale up as digital presses advance:

The next generation presses demand ultra-high data rates
The next generation presses demand ultra-high data rates

 

If we start with 600 dpi, 20 inches wide, 3 drop sizes and 100 m per minute, then that’s 120 MBps per colorant, which is not too challenging. But once we move up to 1200 dpi, we’ve now quadrupled the data to 480 MBps, which is the read speed of all but the most bleeding-edge solid state drives today.

With printhead, nozzle and roller technology improving, the rated speeds also increase, so what happens when we go up to 300 m per min? It’s now 1.4 GBps and you will need one of those bleeding-edge solid state drives to keep up, bearing in mind you will now be writing as well as reading.

And if we go wider to print our wallcoverings at 40 inches wide, we’re now at 2.8 GBps … and we want our walls to look great close up, so we might be using 7 drop sizes, which takes us up to 5.7 GBps … and this is all just for one colorant!

Based on these numbers, it should be clear now that, for this generation of digital presses and beyond, a disk-based workflow just isn’t going to cut it: reading and writing this amount of data to disk would not actually be fast enough and would require ridiculous amounts of physical storage. This is where software evolved from traditional workflows hits a barrier: the data rate barrier.

To solve this we need to go back to the drawing board. It’s similar to the engineering challenge of moving from propeller-driven aircraft to jets that could break the sound barrier. Firstly, you need to develop a new engine and then you need to commercialize it.

So, if you’re looking for software to power your first or next digital press it’s going to need the right  kind of software engine that isn’t based on disk technology so that you can drive your digital press electronics directly and smash through the data rate barrier. In other words, you need to go Direct.

To learn more about the impact of rising data rates and how you can futureproof your next digital press, visit our website to find out more about going Direct.

If you’re interested in calculating data rates take a look at this blog post where you can download your own data rate calculator: Choosing the class of your raster image processor

Further reading:

  1. Harlequin Core – the heart of your digital press
  2. What is a raster image processor 
  3. Ditch the disk: a new generation of RIPs to drive your digital press
  4. Is your printer software up to the job?
  5. Where is screening performed in the workflow
  6. What is halftone screening?
  7. Unlocking document potential
  8. Future-proofing your digital press to cope with rising data rates

About the author

Ian Bolton, Product Manager, Direct
Ian Bolton, Product Manager – Direct
Ian has over 15 years’ experience in industry as a software engineer focusing on high performance. With a passion for problem-solving, Ian’s role as product manager for the Direct™ range gives him the opportunity to work with printer OEMs and break down any new technology barriers that may be preventing them from reaching their digital printer’s full potential.

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Choosing the software to drive your digital inkjet press

When developing your first or next digital press, the software you use to drive it will be a key factor in its success, both for the data rates and output quality you can achieve. The time it takes to get your press to market based on the engineering effort involved to deliver and integrate that software is also a consideration.

A simple user interface to get  you started

The Press Operator Controller (POC) is an example front end or user interface available with Harlequin Direct™ , the software solution that drives printhead electronics at ultra-high data rates while retaining high output quality. The POC provides you with an initial working system, so you’re up and running without any significant in-house software development. We provide you with the source code so that you have the option to update and integrate it as part of your production system.

I have created a short video to show you its main functions:

You can find out more information about the Direct™ range of products by visiting our website: https://www.globalgraphics.com/products/direct

Further reading about considerations when choosing your digital inkjet press:

  1. How do I choose the right PC specification for my digital press workflow
  2. Future-proofing your digital press to cope with rising data rates
  3. Looking to reduce errors with simple job management, keep control of color, and run at ultra-high speed for jobs with variable data?

About the author

Ian Bolton, Product Manager, Direct
Ian Bolton, Product Manager – Direct

Ian has over 15 years’ experience in industry as a software engineer focusing on high performance. With a passion for problem-solving, Ian’s role as product manager for the Direct range gives him the opportunity to work with printer OEMs and break down any new technology barriers that may be preventing them from reaching their digital printer’s full potential.

Be the first to receive our news updates and product news. Why not subscribe to our monthly newsletter? Subscribe here

Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter

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How do I choose the right PC specification for my digital press workflow?

When planning the implementation of your first or next digital press, the PC specification you choose to run your software workflow will play an important part in the data rates you will be able to achieve. Assuming you are not bottlenecked by disk drive performance due to requiring intermediate disk accesses, you can generally expect data rates to rise with the computational power of your PC.

It might therefore make sense to review the PassMark scores for a range of CPUs within your budget and make your choice based on that, but this alone won’t be enough to tell you whether you’ll be able to drive your printer at full rated speed. Similarly, you may already have an existing PC system in mind but need to know if it will be powerful enough for your new requirements.

Ideally, you could set up an evaluation system to run some typical print jobs to get a definitive answer, but this could be costly and labor-intensive, especially if this is your first digital press.

It’s for this reason we created Direct Benchmark™: an analysis tool that exercises Harlequin Direct™, our ultra-high data rate RIPping and screening solution, with your choice of press configuration and print jobs, stepping through a tuning cycle to obtain a series of data rates and line speeds that can be achieved.

There are two main ways Direct Benchmark can help you: firstly, if you have an existing PC system to run on, you can install Direct Benchmark and gather your own results; secondly, you could base your decision on a database of Direct Benchmark results we are gathering here at Global Graphics Software from running a variety of jobs on a range of PC specifications.

Running Direct Benchmark yourself

Whilst a real Harlequin Direct system would be connected to printhead electronics and driving your press directly, the Harlequin Direct invoked by Direct Benchmark doesn’t require this connection. This makes it very quick and easy to install and start gathering performance numbers. The screenshot below shows the settings you can use to reflect your printer configuration and define the print jobs to benchmark.

During benchmarking, you will be presented with a screen showing statistics for each run and a real-time graph of data rate at the bottom, and then you will be able to export the results at the end. If you would like to see Direct Benchmark in action, you can view a short demo here:

Using the Direct Benchmark database

If you aren’t in a position to run Direct Benchmark yourself, we are in the process of gathering results for a range of press configurations and print jobs, running on a variety of PC hardware specifications. This is being conducted in conjunction with Proactive Technologies, who are providing access to some of the machines we’re using. Whilst it is too early to draw any conclusions or share our results at this stage, if you have some typical print jobs and a press configuration in mind, please get in touch with me, ian.bolton@globalgraphics.com, because we may be able to generate the results for you.

For more information about Direct, please visit globalgraphics.com/direct

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About the author:

Ian Bolton, Product Manager, Direct
Ian Bolton, Product Manager – Direct

Ian has over 15 years’ experience in industry as a software engineer focusing on high performance. With a passion for problem-solving, Ian’s role as product manager for the Direct range gives him the opportunity to work with printer OEMs and break down any new technology barriers that may be preventing them from reaching their digital printer’s full potential.