ATLANTA, May 22, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Color Imaging, Inc. (OTCBB:CIMG) reports that Patent Number 6,386,684, Curved Print Head for Charged Particle Generation, has been issued to Michael W. Brennan, Color Imaging's Chairman and CEO, and William G. Read, Ph.D., a technical advisor to the Company and a Principal Scientist at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The issued patent relates to an improved Electron Beam Imaging ("EBI") print head for digital high-speed printing or image generation. EBI is a well-established digital printing process, known as electrography, and competes with laser printing but at much higher print rates. EBI print heads are the basis of the technology, are currently only available from Delphax Systems (Mississauga, Canada) and represent a significant cost component as a consumable product required for electrographic printing. A typical EBI print head has longevity of 150,000 pages and, at print rates of 300 pages-per-minute, is usually replaced after each shift of production printing.
The Company reported that pre-production units have printed thousands of pages with both black and color toners achieving excellent quality and expect the life of production print heads to meet or exceed that of products that are currently purchased elsewhere.
Alan Spatz, the Company's Director of Operations, remarked that, "This product, once in production, is exceedingly important as hundreds of EBI print heads are consumed every month by our user base and will significantly increase our added value. Following our earlier patent for process color toners, U. S. Patent Number 5,834,150, this patent underscores our commitment to EBI technology."
Spatz further added, "The improved EBI print head implementation is quite simple, basically a multi-layer printed circuit board whose novel curved surface conforms to the radius of the imaging cylinder and generates charges, or dots, on the imaging drum of a uniform size at print resolutions of 300 or 600 dots-per-inch. Earlier EBI print heads used a flat print head surface to generate the electrostatic image on an imaging cylinder and, because of the differing surface aspects, flat print head surface and curved imaging cylinder, generated dots of varying sizes."
Color Imaging develops and manufactures consumable products used in laser printers, analog and digital copiers and supplies complete printing systems for commercial printers. Consumable products include black text, color and specialty toners, including MICR (magnetic ink characters that are printed on checks and other financial documents). Provided for the commercial printer is a complete EBI-based printing system that installs directly on existing offset presses. The printing system expands conventional offset printing capabilities to include the printing of unlimited computer-generated variable data including images, bar codes, MICR, and alphanumeric sequences. These functions address the needs of commercial printers for the digital processing and printing of variable data at extremely high speeds and eliminates all conventional prepress processes, such as the preparation and storage of printing plates and mixing of inks, and also allows affordable print runs of several hundred to millions of pages -- a true Print-On-Demand ("POD") capability.
Color Imaging, Inc. is headquartered at 4350 Peachtree Industrial Blvd., Norcross, GA. 30071. The telephone number is 800/783-1090 and the fax is 770/242-3494. CIMG's Web sites are www.colorimage-micr.com and www.logical-imaging.com.
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act 1995: Information and announcements in this release involve Color Imaging's expectations, beliefs, hopes, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future and forward-looking statements included in this release are based upon information available to Color Imaging as of the date of the release, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could differ materially from our current expectations. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include but are not limited to dependence on suppliers; short product life cycles and reductions in unit selling prices; delays in development or shipment of new products; lack of market acceptance of our new products or services; inability to continue to develop competitive new products and services on a timely basis; introduction of new products or services by major competitors; our ability to attract and retain qualified employees; difficulties in assimilating companies previously acquired; inability to expand our operations to support increased growth; and declining economic conditions, including a recession. These and other factors and risks associated with our business are discussed from time to time in Color Imaging's filings with the SEC including the Form 10-KSB filed April 1, 2002 or Form SB-2 filed on December 28, 2001.