Scribe Printing Technologies
626 Arch Street
PO Box 146
Meadville, Pa 16335
8140282-4242
bdeets@scribe.us.com
1/15/2011
Janet Anderson, KIZ Coordinator
Northwest Commission
395 Seneca Street, PO Box 1127
Oil City, Pa 16301
MICRO GRANT APPLICATION
Please find attached the 3 page executive summary for a Micro grant of $10,000.00 to
Scribe Printing Technologies, Inc.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
We wish to apply for a $10,000.00 micro grant for further development of our Inkjet
Printing process, namely for software development to facilitate further commercialization
of our printing process.
Founded in October of 2008, Scribe Printing is comprised of myself, Bob Deets, 20 years
experience in plastic injection molding and product decoration. Engineering Manager
Frank Pagano and Technology Manager Glenn Sahlin have a combined 40+ years of
experience in the design and fabrication of industrial automation machines. Our goal is
to manufacture high speed digital inkjet printing machines, using instantly curing UV
inks. While printing in a single pass, we can apply multiple imprint colors to various
substrates at speeds up to 500mm/sec, while at the same time printing unique
identification markings so each piece can be uniquely identified for purposes of lot code /
date tracking.
We have applied for patent protection in October of 2008, and have received notification
for the USPTO that the application was received in April 2010. We have received no
further information to date.
We built our first machine in 2008 and displayed it at the SGIA trade show in Atlanta,
Ga. Because it was so different from anything commercially available we received much
interest. In May of 2009 we displayed the machine at the FESPA trade show in
Amsterdam, the Netherlands where it was exposed to an international audience.
When we made the machine, we purchased control software from Konica Minolta. It
worked well, but not flawlessly. It also did not include any variable data capabilities,
which is necessary for unique device identification. There is a company located in
England (Global Inkjet Solutions) that currently offers a software package to accomplish
this, but it costs about $40,000 per machine. We wish to make our own software and
offer it with our machines at a greatly reduced cost compared to what is currently
available.
The software will work as is outlined below:
A bitmap image of up to 4 colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) is generated using
a commercially available computer graphic program, like Adobe Photoshop. The image
can be saved in bmp, tif, or jpeg format. Our software will then open the image, convert it
from RGB for viewing on a computer screen to CMYK for printing on our machine. The
software will then detect up to 8 grayscale levels per color and separate the grey scaled
image into 1 file each of the primary four colors (CMYK). It then sends the separated
files sequentially for printing to a print controller board which formats the data and sends
it to the appropriate print head for printing.
The software will also enable us while the image is opened, before grayscale detection, to
place variable data fields including serial numbers, date/time stamps, 40 different kinds
of 1D barcodes, as well as 2D barcodes, data matrices into the image for “on the fly”
generation and printing.
Our software will also analyze an image, and automatically generate another image
specific to that image that will allow under printing white ink onto dark substrates, under
printing primer for improved ink adhesion to low surface energy substrates, and
overprinting clear hard coats to offer enhanced surface protection to the substrate.
The software will also include options for loading printing a single image repeatedly, and
loading and printing multiple files and printing the sequence of files repeatedly. There
will be a counter so the number of times an image has been printed updates with each
print.
Included will be the ability to import lists in txt of CSV formats so that non sequential
serial numbers as well as lists of names for personalization can be printed individually.
Currently we have many interested prospects for which we have submitted approval
toward the purchase of printing machines. At the moment, we have a company named
Dentsply who is the world’s largest producer of prosthetic teeth. They package sets of
teeth on small plastic cards for shipment to dentists. As they are interested in up to 6
machines, we are currently printing sample runs on their products to build inventory for
them, so they can seamlessly switch from their current method of manufacture of printed
tooth cards to our inkjet printed tooth cards. The first run of 72,000 cards was just
completed, and it required 484 different copies to identify different shapes and shades of
teeth. We will be receiving the next order for 72,000 cards in the next 2 weeks.
While contract printing such as this is not what Scribe Printing Technologies does as a
matter of habit, it serves 2 purposes. The customer is able to see our process applied to
their products, and we are able to generate some operating income.
We expect that this rather ambitious software project will take over 400 hours to produce.
At a programming rate of $40.00/hr this totals $16,000.00.
Our Technology Manager, Glenn Sahlin who is one of the principals in Scribe Printing
Technologies will write the above described software. Glenn has 20 years experience in
writing custom control software for various custom industrial automation machines, and
is more than capable of performing the required tasks. In our conversations regarding the
feature set we want, we have come up with a very robust piece of software that will allow
our machines to outperform anything that is currently commercially available, while
permitting the addition of more features as needed in the future.
Companies we are in discussion with regarding our printers:
Dentsply (Nasdaq XRAY)
Becton Dickinson
Maybelline
A.G. Russell
Nypro
Venture Plastics
Plastic Design and Manufacturing