Intelligent software is as important a component of your digital press as any hardware

Copyright © Global Graphics Software Limited 2016
Software for digital presses
Martin Bailey, CTO October 2016

Global Graphics Software
Software platforms for printing and digital documents
Global network
of partners:
HP, Kodak, Delphax, Agfa,
Staples, Canon, Fuji Xerox
Primary markets for:
PRINT PLATFORMS Commercial printing,
newspapers, wide format graphics, labels, industrial inkjet,
office
DIGITAL DOCUMENT PLATFORMS
Consumer and enterprise document applications
Public
Company
Euronext
(GLOG)
Main R & D in Cambridge, UK Offices in Tokyo & near Boston
Harlequin
Roots go back to
1986 in
Cambridge

H Harlequin technology
BILLIONs of pages
rendered every day with Harlequin
#1fastest
software
Drives >70%of world’s newspaper presses
80% share
of world-wide
photobook market

Our customers
We develop the software that provides the power to drive all of these
and more:

Copyright © Global Graphics Software Limited 2016 5
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
Billionsofletter/A4equivalentimpressions
Brochures
Catalogs
Direct Mail and Inserts
Books and Manuals
Magazines and Newspapers
Other Color (including
Transaction)
Higher Quality Applications Printed on Coated Stocks Will Be
a Key Driver in High-speed Production Color Inkjet Growth
(10M+ Color Duty Cycle Segment, U.S. & W.E.)
Source: U.S. & W.E. Digital Production Printing Application Forecasts: 2014-2019, InfoTrends
• Overall page growth = 21.0%
• Higher quality application growth = 28.7%
• Other color growth = 9.1%
Medium or high
quality requirements
Direct Mail and Inserts
Books & Manuals
Magazines & Newspapers
High quality requirementsBrochures & Catalogs
Lower quality
requirements
Other Color (Including
Transaction

Inkjet growth is going to happen
• There are enough opportunities to make this
an attractive market
• Both for print companies and for vendors
• So let’s look at the barriers
• What do print companies need to
delight their customers?
• What do vendors need to
delight the print companies?
• What’s preventing delivery?

Dear Vendor; is this you?
• You’ve designed your press
• Selected heads, inks, fluid pumps, filters, degassers, media, media
transport, driers, unwinders and rewinders … etc
• Everything works
• You put a BMP file in a specific
directory and get good output
• Time to start selling!
• Oh, hang on a sec
• Will customers be happy to
drive it like that?

Sounds like a joke …
• But it’s not
• There are lots of companies who have pretty much done that
• A press sells on:
• Print formats (size, roll vs sheet etc)
• Supported media
• Print/color quality
• … and how well it fits into the rest of the
printing and finishing/converting workflow
• Which includes software connectivity

Message #1
• Every bit of your press system is vital
• No ink?
• No press
• No paper transport?
• No press
• No software for your Digital Front End?
• No press
• No press?
• No revenue!

Quality matters!
Brand managers and buyers are driving change by pushing the boundaries.
They need high-quality at high-speed
Inkjet press manufacturers are frustrated with output
quality. They are reaching the limits of what can be achieved
with mechanical improvements
The faster the press runs, the
harder it is to control drop
placement precisely
Coated and impermeable media suffer
more from ink/surface artifacts

Quality matters!
Brand managers and buyers are driving change by pushing the boundaries.
They need high-quality at high-speed
Inkjet press manufacturers are frustrated with output
quality. They are reaching the limits of what can be achieved
with mechanical improvements
The vendors know they need to significantly improve output quality and
operate at high speeds to keep pages fed to the press
It’s often not financially viable to fix these press problems in hardware
But they can frequently be compensated for in software

Fixing hardware with software
• Sometimes the right software can solve a problem
elsewhere
• In hardware, inks, etc
• It may be fixable at source
• But sometimes that’s not viable financially or in
time-to-market
• Compensating for many things, such as
• Over-inking
• Mottling & streaking
• Head-to-head (or nozzle to nozzle) variation

Limiting ink is vital in inkjet
• Using too much ink can
• Make drying/curing harder/slower/more expensive
• Require the press to run more slowly
• Increase ink mixing on the substrate surface
• Reducing the readability of barcodes and small text
• Lead to cockling or paper stretch
• Reduce media tensile strength in web presses
• But printing companies want to make their own ICC color
profiles for new media
• So ink limiting and media profiling must be kept separate

High-speed inkjet drop placement
• Ink drops should
ideally form a
regular grid on
the media They usually don’t You can see
straight lines along
the media (up and
down), but uneven
lines across the
media

Causes common quality issues
Irregular drop
positioning leads to
drops ‘randomly’
coalescing on the
media:
These microscopic
effects cause visible
artefacts, often
described as mottling
or streaking:
Synthetic image with exaggerated artefacts in order to be visible on a
projector, or reproduced on another print process

Single pass inkjet non-uniformity
• Head to head variation in
manufacture and head
wear can lead to banding
along the print
• This can be compensated
for in software in the DFE

Message #2
• Think about hardware and software in parallel
• Each one affects the other, and software may be able to resolve a
‘hardware’ problem faster and at lower cost than adjusting the
hardware itself

In our experience …
• We’ve worked with many digital press vendors
• Most under-estimate the effort/time needed for their
first inkjet press
• Both the physical press and the software
• We recommend you address both in parallel
• For minimum time to market
• To enable best cooperation between the two
• And remember, if it’s going to take you a few years
to get to market …
Information is not
knowledge. The only
source of knowledge is
experience.

Message #3
• The market is constantly evolving
• Design for the future; It may be years until you hit ROI
• You will need to respond to changing
customer demands
• Your DFE/software must be part of that
• Your customers may tell you they only want
to print runs of 5000 copies right now
• They’ll probably want variable data and
every-page-different when your press ships
• What does that mean for your data rates?

QUESTIONS
Speak to us here at The IJC or contact me to find out more
martin.bailey@globalgraphics.com
We welcome enquiries from journalists writing about DFEs, inkjet printing, variable
data printing & PDF/VT, screening, colour management:
jill.taylor@globalgraphics.com
For more information: www.globalgraphics.com

Intelligent software is as important a component of your digital press as any hardware

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