Global Graphics has released a new version of ScreenPro, the high-speed screening engine tuned to smooth out imperfections in inkjet printing. It introduces a technology that reduces non-uniformity across the web, commonly known as the inkjet smile.
ScreenPro Version 2.0 introduces PrintFlat technology that mitigates the artifacts caused by variation within a head, between heads or wear on the head itself. It does this by being able to address every nozzle separately on any combination of head and electronics, to achieve very fine granularity.
The latest ScreenPro can be applied to any inkjet technology and print industry workflow and can be added to printers already on the market, or incorporated into an inkjet press that’s still on the drawing board.
“Our customers wanted a technology to address the banding that inkjet print bars commonly display,” said Tom Mooney, ScreenPro product manager. “Printheads don’t have a uniform density distribution across the head resulting in visible banding. Different print heads will have different baseline densities and while these can be corrected by ‘tweaking’ voltages this is time consuming and can affect the life of the heads.
“PrintFlat provides a calibration that corrects for these defects providing a flat, uniform density distribution across print bars. In addition to making improvements in quality ScreenPro 2.0 provides significant performance improvements and the ability for ‘real time’ screening driving data to the press at full speed.”
ScreenPro can be supplied to printer manufacturers either as a cross-platform development component or with a full branded user interface. Multiple ScreenPro engines can be run on the same server or offloaded onto separate computers. This parallel processing of screens leads to high speeds, especially with dedicated ScreenPro engines sending print data at printer speed directly to the drive electronics driving individual print bars for each colour.
