The Melbourn, Cambridgeshire-based firm, which specialises in the design and manufacture of printhead driver systems, said its PDC-6GMA Print Driver Card (PDC) can accommodate up to six GMA 33 printheads while multiple PDCs can be linked to drive a maximum of 762 printheads.
The new heads use silicon micro-electro-mechanical (Si-MEM) technology.
Used alongside Meteor’s electronics, the company said its MetScan software enables print machinery builders to design as much or as little of the Digital Front End as they choose.
Samba GMA printheads have a native resolution of 300dpi and ink drop size of 5pl. The Samba GMA 33 can jet a wide range of fluids including UV-curable, solvent and aqueous inks and is suitable for scanning applications such as textile, indoor signage, soft signage and high quality UV printing.
Meteor Inkjet managing director Clive Ayling said: “One PDC is generally used in each printer though a very big printer might use two or three. The GMA 33 printhead is designed for printers with a scanning carriage and whilst there are some machines with really big carriages on, the vast majority of such machines have quite small carriages and you’d put maybe half a dozen heads on it.”
The company has also announced the availability of the Meteor Development Kit for GMA printheads, which it said eases print system design and significantly speeds time to market.
Multi-head, multi-ink configurations can be evaluated and integrated using electronics that can then be transferred straight to manufacturing, the firm said. This kit comes complete with drive electronics, software, cabling, power supply and cooling assembly.
Ayling said that being first to market with these printer drivers means that Meteor technology will be used on the first generations of machines that use GMA 33 printheads.
“People buying PDCs mostly hear about us through referral by the manufacturer. Fujifilm collaborate very closely with us and, once a printhead has been launched, Dimatix will offer its heads and our driver electronics as a combination because used together the customer can put a machine together in a few weeks.”
Meteor, which works closely with all of the major industrial inkjet printhead manufacturers, was acquired by print software developer Global Graphics in December 2016.
