As production inkjet continues to expand its horizons, it can be a challenge for inkjet press manufacturers to have all of the skills internally to take their products to the next level. Global Graphics’ announcement of their Fundamentals service for manufacturers of inkjet presses can help manufacturers overcome some of those hurdles.
Today, Global Graphics made a timely and interesting announcement about a service it will be unveiling at drupa 2016, in stand 70B21/C20 in the drupa innovation parc (DIP). Called Fundamentals, the service provides inkjet press manufacturers with a single source for the key software components and engineering know-how that are essential to building a digital front end. It is aimed at label, packaging and commercial inkjet press manufacturers initially. The goal is to help them to reduce their time to market and their engineering costs.
My first thought at hearing about this service was that it sounds very much like something their sister company, HYBRID Software, might offer, with its system integration roots. And in fact, the two companies have partnered to bring this to reality. But when you dig into it further, you can also see that Global Graphics is just taking the wealth of expert resources it has developed and acquired over the years to address this important need.
Presses are no longer just about heavy metal engineering, since the availability of inkjet technologies has democratized the design and development of new digital inkjet print solutions. And purchasing the hardware elements and assembling them takes you only so far. The real value of these new systems is driven by building a good DFE that can drive them to maximize quality and performance. Global Graphics has developed an intimate understanding of production inkjet through its relationship with HP, its largest OEM, among others.
While Global Graphics is mostly known for its RIP technologies, the company has also developed many supporting technologies that can be used to maximize other RIP manufacturers’ technologies. These include the ability to handle significant amounts of variable data efficiently; the ScreenPro multi-level screening engine which was designed for production inkjet; and ColorPro, the color engine that was one of the first to incorporate support for standard and N-channel ICC profiles.
There is no doubt that this new service will be very busy with the explosion of new production inkjet demand.
We will be doing a full article on Global Graphics and its products after drupa 2016.
