Hybrid Software Group Strategic report Governance Financial statements Other information Printhead solutions Under the brand of Meteor Inkjet, we develop and supply printhead drive electronics, software, tools and services for industrial inkjet systems and printing devices. The industrial inkjet market is very broad and fast growing, and includes ceramic tiles, flooring and décor, wallpaper, labels and packaging, functional and 3D printing, product decoration, and textiles. Our software and proprietary drive electronics send data to printheads inside inkjet devices to control the output produced by these printheads. Printheads are a critical component of an inkjet press and generally contain multiple nozzles for jetting ink or other fluids onto substrates. The major industrial printhead manufacturers are our route to identifying inkjet development projects around the world. Consequently, we work closely with all leading printhead vendors, including Xaar, FUJIFILM Dimatix, Kyocera, Konica Minolta, Memjet, Toshiba TEC, SII, Ricoh, Epson, and Xerox. We continually develop hardware and software drivers for new printhead models and partner with printhead manufacturers and OEMs to accelerate their route to production. Our solutions are modular, scalable, and production-ready and are supported by a world-class technical team, based near Cambridge, UK as well as in key markets including China and North America. 18 Hybrid Software Group PLC Annual Report 2022 Business segments continued... Customers Our solutions reduce development risk and time to market for manufacturers building new industrial inkjet printers. Among our customers in this segment are Mark Andy, a leading label equipment manufacturer in the US; Hymmen, a leading printed laminate equipment manufacturer in Germany; and China’s leading ceramic tile decoration equipment manufacturer. Key Products We support the leading printheads demanded by OEMs and print system integrators worldwide with solutions that provide high speed output, unmatched quality, and rapid time to market for new product launches. Meteor Inkjet collaborates closely with printhead manufacturers to support the launch of new printheads with custom drive electronics and software. Our products comprise: • Electronics: powerful, flexible and scalable drive electronics for all major industrial inkjet printheads; • Software: OEMs can license an application-tuned Meteor Digital Front End or develop bespoke software using a Meteor Software Development Kit. Optional integrated Harlequin RIP and ScreenPro Advanced Inkjet Screens are available, along with NozzleFix™ and NozzleMask™ to compensate for missing nozzles that cause artifacts in printed output as well as the award-winning patented PrintFlat™ software for output uniformity; • Tools and services: DropWatcher™ for analysing and tuning ink drops in flight, as well as waveform development services for optimised output quality of any ink and substrate combination. Printhead solutions continued... Hybrid Software Group PLC Annual Report 2022 19 During the year Dyndrite™added Meteor Inkjet to the Dyndrite Developer Council (DDC). Dyndrite provide GPU-accelerated computation engines used to create next generation digital manufacturing hardware and software. The collaboration was expanded with the announcement of Meteoryte, a 3D software tool that simplifies the development and adoption of inkjet technology for additive manufacturing applications. Tracey Brown, Meteor’s Director of Strategy & Marketing, spoke about the latest industrial inkjet print quality innovations for textiles at the ESMA Print Textile Printing and Sustainability Conference. Meteor Inkjet launched its new web site in 2022 in Korean, Japanese and Chinese as well as English, reflecting the growing importance of these markets. Meteor Inkjet is collaborating with Core Technologie GmbH on solutions for additive manufacturing. Core Technologie is a global provider of 3D CAD data conversion software for additive manufacturing. Inkjet is developing printhead drive electronics and software for the new T3200, T1600 and D3000 printheads announced by Epson. These solutions join Meteor’s existing products to drive Epson S3200, S800, I3200 and I1600 printheads. Meteor continues to provide the most complete range of Epson industrial printhead driving solutions on the market. Meteor Inkjet was granted a US patent for “Inkjet nozzle status detection” by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patent covers a system and method for determining, in real-time, the operational status of a nozzle in a piezoelectric industrial inkjet printhead. Matthew Pullen, Product Manager, runs a practical demonstration of the Meteor DropWatcher with the Seiko RC1536M printhead on the Inktester from People & Technology at the People & Technology Technical Conference Europe 2022 in Castelló, Spain. Photo credit: Nessan Cleary Clive Ayling, Managing Director of Meteor Inkjet.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTI5NzM=