Cambridge UK – ScreenPro™, Global Graphics Software’s ultra-high-speed screening engine that smooths out imperfections in inkjet printing, has been awarded a Printing Industries of America InterTech™ Technology Award.

ScreenPro adds the final polish to output produced on inkjet presses by smoothing out imperfections caused by the physics of jetting ink onto substrate, defects that are often difficult and expensive to correct mechanically.

It can be applied to any inkjet technology and print industry workflow, can be added to presses already on the market, or incorporated into an inkjet press that’s still on the drawing board.

“Not many technologies meet the standard for an InterTech Technology Award—being truly innovative and expected to have a significant impact on our industry,” said James Workman, vice president for Printing Industries of America’s Center for Technology and Research. “ScreenPro was one of them, however, because it was both a difficult engineering feat and makes high-speed inkjet a better print solution.”

ScreenPro applies Advanced Inkjet Screens™ to deal with the challenges of substrate absorbency: the Pearl screen addresses chaining and streaking artifacts and produces a very natural effect on more or less absorbent substrates; the Mirror screen addresses the orange peel effect and is ideal for non-absorbent and poorly-wetting surfaces such as tin cans and flexible packaging, and also areas of dense metallic ink.

“Tom Mooney, ScreenPro product manager explains. “ScreenPro will revolutionize the inkjet market by opening up opportunities for print service providers to produce higher value new products that could not be printed with previous solutions because the quality was simply not good enough. We are delighted to receive this recognition from the PIA and grateful for the support of press vendors who supported our submission.”

Gary Fry, CEO of Global Graphics said, “ScreenPro is significant because it makes available for the first time, a solution to improve inkjet output quality that works for any inkjet press, with any workflow, any type of ink or substrate and any combination of printhead and electronics. The benefits are widely available to any vendor building an inkjet press and will can make the difference between a press that can ship because it has met the necessary quality and speed thresholds, and one that can’t. “

ScreenPro is supplied to press vendors either as a cross-platform development component or with a full branded user interface. As a development component ScreenPro integrates seamlessly into a workflow solution. Multiple ScreenPro engines can be run on the same server or offloaded onto separate computers. This parallel processing of screens leads to blistering speeds, especially with dedicated ScreenPro engines sending print data at press speed directly to the drive electronics driving individual print bars for each color.

Global Graphics has a long history in screening innovation dating back to its patented FM or stochastic screening technology of the 1990s. In the age of digital printing, and inkjet in particular, Global Graphics has developed new screening technologies from the ground up in response to press manufacturers’ concerns about image quality in single pass inkjet applications.