The Stinger Raster Engine™ 

A Technology Overview

Raster Imaging

Image rendering systems, whether in the high-end film image setter or the desktop laser or inkjet paper printer, are overwhelmingly raster-based systems.  In the Graphics Arts industry, the traditional printing plate fabrication process uses a Raster Image Processor (RIP) program to drive a film image setter.  The film is then photo-chemically transferred to the printing plate medium.  This laborious and chemical-laden process is tedious but well understood and produces outstanding results.  It is understandable then that a process that produces the printing plate by directly engraving it would simplify and streamline that process.  Indeed, there are many products currently on the market which do just that.  But these machines are vector-based and the resulting plates are inferior in quality to the traditional film process.  The quality may be acceptable for many low-end applications.  However, for high-end graphics the result is poor. So why is it then, that all of these products are vector-based rather than raster-based?  The primary reason these units are vector-based is simplicity.  The motion system, optics, and software controllers have been adopted from laser marking systems. These systems are similar to pen plotting systems which are designed to draw lines and curves.

The Stinger Raster Engine changes all that.  The Stinger Raster Engine has been designed from the ground up to optimize raster operations.  It is combination of dedicated software and electronics, plus a precise motion system and high-quality optics. It is driven directly from the same RIP used in the traditional film process.  The Stinger Raster Engine is optimized to move the large raster image data sets directly and efficiently to yield extremely precise pixel placement on the media.  The result is outstanding with plate quality comparable to the industry gold standard film processes.  In addition, since it is driven directly from an industry standard RIP, all of the controls for handling such items as line screens and ink dot gain are accessible in a manner that operators, craftsmen and artists are already familiar with.

The basic structure of a raster engine based laser engraver is shown below: