MILWAUKEE, WI – RBP Chemical Technology, a renowned supplier of specialty chemicals and delivery devices for the pressroom, printed circuit board (PCB) fabrication, and medical implant device industries, is excited to announce its strategic partnership with Mid-States Graphics, a trusted provider of cutting-edge solutions for professional printers since 1984.

This partnership marks a significant milestone for both RBP Chemical Technology and Mid-States Graphics as they join forces to enhance their product offerings and deliver unparalleled customer service to the graphic arts industry. With Mid-States Graphics’ extensive expertise and RBP’s top-of-the-line chemicals, customers can expect a comprehensive range of high-quality pressroom products designed to meet the evolving demands of today’s professional printers.

“We are thrilled to partner with Mid-States Graphics,” said Ken Kocolowski, National Sales Manager for Print, at RBP Chemical Technology. “Their proven track record of delivering innovative solutions aligns perfectly with our commitment to excellence. Together, we are confident in our ability to provide unmatched value and support to our customers in the graphic arts industry.”

Mid-States Graphics has built a reputation for its commitment to customer satisfaction and its ability to address the unique challenges faced by professional printers. By leveraging RBP Chemical Technology’s cutting-edge products and extensive industry knowledge, Mid-States Graphics will strengthen its ability to deliver tailored solutions to its customers.

“We are excited to join forces with RBP Chemical Technology,” stated John Miller, President at Mid-States Graphics. “This partnership allows us to expand our product portfolio and offer our customers a wider range of pressroom products that meet their specific needs. We look forward to leveraging RBP’s industry expertise and providing our customers with even greater value.”

Customers can expect a seamless transition as RBP Chemical Technology takes on some of the distribution of Mid-States Graphics Pressroom products. The partnership aims to improve accessibility to these high-quality products, streamline order fulfillment processes, and enhance overall customer experience.

WALTHAM, MA – Nano Dimension Ltd. (Nasdaq: NNDM) (“Nano Dimension”, “Nano” or the “Company”), a leading supplier of Additively Manufactured Electronics (“AME”) and multi-dimensional polymer, metal & ceramic Additive Manufacturing (“AM”) 3D printers, today reinforced its plan to deliver long-term value to Stratasys Ltd. (Nasdaq: SSYS) (“Stratasys”) shareholders, which includes:

1. An $18.00 per share special tender offer to provide certain, near-term premium and all-cash value to Stratasys shareholders.
2. Nano demands that the Stratasys Board call an Extraordinary General Meeting of Stratasys shareholders following the completion of the $18-per-share-special-tender for the purpose of removing the majority of the Stratasys Board of Directors and replacing them with highly qualified nominees proposed by Nano. Nano believes such action is vital to prevent further value destruction and create a path to establishing a preeminent leader in the rapidly growing AM market that will drive long-term value.

Nano Dimension is offering a straightforward plan to deliver value:

• Delivers IMMEDIATE $18 cash value to Stratasys shareholders.
• Nano leadership will set up management to be committed, motivated and compensated based on demonstrating efficacy in driving the performance of Stratasys, which will become the main business asset of Nano following the successful tender, reversing years of lagging Stratasys growth and profits. The immediate value of Nano’s $18 per share all-cash tender is clear:
• Provides a premium to all relevant Stratasys historical trading levels, including a 39% premium to the unaffected 60-day VWAP as of March 3rd, 2023.
• Provides more certainty than the pending Desktop Metal Ltd. (NYSE: DM) (“Desktop Metal”) merger agreement or the 3D Systems Corp. (NYSE: DDD) (“3D Systems”) unsolicited, unclear & dubious proposal.

Nano has approximately $1 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand to complete the special tender offer, which is not subject to Nano shareholder approval. The board of directors of Nano has full authority to effect the tender offer as confirmed by the Israeli courts. Nano believes urgent change is needed. Stratasys’ current Board of Directors is not fulfilling its fiduciary duties and not acting in its shareholders’ interests:

Stratasys directors refused to negotiate with Nano, a well-funded and reputable peer that made multiple all-cash offers at compelling premia, disregarding Nano’s efforts to reach a mutually agreeable all-cash acquisition of all outstanding ordinary shares of Stratasys not currently owned by Nano. Those offers included:

$18.00, $19.55, and $20.05 per share, reflecting premiums of 26%, 37% and 41% to the unaffected closing stock price as of March 3rd, 2023, submitted to Stratasys on March 22nd, 29th and April 3rd, 2023, respectively.

Stratasys directors (several of which are ex-CEOs of the company) and management have a history of empty promises to Stratasys shareholders, including making statements every two to three years that Stratasys will become a “billion-dollar company,” only to deliver further cash burn and value destruction, as evidenced by the losses on the sale of MakerBot in September 2022. MakerBot alone cost its shareholders at least $403 million (for a startup with approximately $15.7 million revenue in the year prior to acquisition) and additional over $60 million in cash1 which was spent in order to sell/spin out a failed investment. This was originally initiated and closed by a present board member when he was the CEO of Stratasys. This is just one of many examples of the Stratasys Board’s history of value destruction.

Stratasys directors agreed to a value-destroying transaction with Desktop Metal designed to preserve their entrenchment. Stratasys’ agreement to merge with a cash-burning de-SPAC in a transaction would destroy value and be highly dilutive to Stratasys shareholders, leaving shareholders with less than two-thirds of a company that would have an uncertain path for long-term value creation.

Over the last few days, Stratasys’ institutional and other shareholders have already filed lawsuits against this Board about their corporate governance practices in relation to the transaction.

Stratasys needs better management, operators and, first and foremost, Board oversight to optimize the business and set the company on a path to realize its potential.

The time for change at Stratasys is now. Through its SPECIAL TENDER OFFER of June 26th, 2023, and the ultimate replacement of the Stratasys Board, Nano Dimension will provide that change and allow Stratasys shareholders to realize the potential of their investment.

CAMBRIDGE, UK – What do electronic skin patches, thin-film flexible photovoltaics and automotive interior consoles have in common? All are produced using printed & flexible electronics, an alternative approach to conventional printed circuit boards that combines additive manufacturing with flexible substrates. Bringing benefits such as rapid prototyping, improved sustainability, scope for form factor differentiation and even stretchability, printed & flexible electronics is gaining traction across an extremely diverse range of applications.

IDTechEx's new report "Flexible & Printed Electronics 2023-2033: Forecasts, Technologies, Markets" provides a comprehensive overview of what can seem a bewilderingly broad topic. By summarizing IDTechEx's extensive printed/flexible electronics report portfolio and drawing on years of following this developing industry, the report outlines innovations, opportunities, and trends across 5 sectors of the printed and flexible electronics market: automotive, consumer goods, energy, healthcare/wellness, and infrastructure/buildings/industrial. This analysis includes granular forecasts of 50 distinct applications and 40 detailed company profiles.

Additionally, the report outlines developments across multiple underlying technologies: 6 distinct manufacturing modalities (including in-mold electronics and flexible hybrid electronics), 5 material types (including conductive inks and component attachment materials), and 4 component types (including flexible ICs). Multiple recent examples, acquired from interviews and industry conferences, show technology development directions and successful commercialization. Assessments of technological and commercial readiness, along with additional forecasts for manufacturing methods and conductive inks, are also included.

Application Opportunities

As with conventional PCBs, printed & flexible electronics has applications across most market verticals. For example, electronic skin patches utilizing conductive inks for electrodes and contacts are already available, as are printed pressure-sensitive insoles for gait monitoring. Conformality lends itself to automotive interiors, where printed/flexible electronics is utilized for lighting, heating and touch-sensitive interfaces. Organic photovoltaics is seeing a renaissance, with recent commercial examples including both building integration and indoor energy harvesting. Sensors based on printed electronics for asset tracking and preventative maintenance promise low production costs novel form factors to suit specific requirements.

Innovations

Printed & flexible electronics represents a fundamentally different approach to manufacturing, replacing subtractive removal of laminated copper with additive deposition of conductive ink. This reduces waste and facilitates digital manufacturing with the associated benefits of rapid prototyping and straightforward design adjustments. The report evaluates a range of manufacturing innovations and their prospects, ranging from fully additive 3D electronics to in-mold electronics and emerging digital printing methods with resolutions as small as 1 μm.

Material innovations underpin many emerging hardware technologies, and printed electronics is no exception. Conductive inks underpin the technology, with dozens of companies developing inks with a range of compositions and attributes. Viscous silver-flake-based ink for screen printing dominates, but alternatives such as nano-particle and particle-free inks are gaining traction for specific applications such as EMI shielding. An especially notable trend is the development of copper ink, which promises a substantial cost reduction over its silver counterparts. Other specialized materials include ultra-low temperature solder and field-aligned anisotropic conductive adhesives enable components such as LEDs to be securely attached to cheaper, thermally fragile substrates. Furthermore, many sensors require specialist materials, such as printable piezoelectric polymers for vibration sensing and functionalized carbon nanotubes for ion detection.

While the original vision for printed and flexible electronics was to print every aspect of the circuit, including the integrated circuit, this has largely been supplanted by flexible hybrid electronics (FHE), which combines printed and mounted functionality. As such, there is an opportunity for natively flexible integrated circuits, batteries, and displays.

Building on Expertise

IDTechEx has been researching developments in the printed and flexible electronics market for well over a decade. Since then, we have stayed close to technical and commercial developments, interviewing key players worldwide, annually attending conferences such as FLEX and LOPEC, delivering multiple consulting projects, and running classes/ workshops on the topic. "Flexible & Printed Electronics 2023-2033: Forecasts, Technologies, Markets" utilizes this experience and expertise to summarize IDTechEx's knowledge and insight across the entire field.

To find out more, including downloadable sample pages, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/PE

Upcoming Free-to-Attend Webinar
Printed and Flexible Electronics: State of the Industry

Dr Matthew Dyson, Principal Technology Analyst at IDTechEx and author of this report, will be presenting a webinar on the topic on Wednesday 12 July 2023 - Printed and Flexible Electronics: State of the Industry.

This webinar will discuss the following topics:

• An introduction to printed and flexible electronics, including motivating factors
• Assessment of product-market fit across the application space, including discussion of use cases seeing most commercial traction
• A selection of recent innovations spanning materials, components, and manufacturing methods
• A roadmap for how the industry will develop, spanning both technologies and applications

There will be a Q&A session at the end of this webinar, where Dr Dyson will answer a few questions that have been sent in. Please send your questions to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Friday 7th July. Please note that there will not be time to answer all of the questions sent in.

Click here to register your place on one of our three sessions. If you are unable to make the date, please register anyway to receive the links to the on-demand recording and slides as soon as they are available!

CAMBRIDGE, UK – Anyone who has used a 'smart lens' app on their smartphone is familiar with machine vision. Rather than simply reproducing and storing a picture for later viewing, machine vision applies an image processing algorithm to obtain additional insight, such as locating edges or object identification. While few would regard a 'smart lens' app as essential, machine vision is a critical component of many industrial processes, such as material sorting and quality control. It is also crucial for ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) and, ultimately, autonomous vehicles.

Embedded vision brings these computational capabilities to the 'edge'. Rather than images being sent from a sensor to a central processor, initial analysis is performed adjacent to the sensor on a dedicated, often application-specific, processor. This greatly reduces data transmission requirements since rather than sending all the acquired information (i.e., each pixel's intensity over time), only the conclusions (e.g., object locations) are transmitted. The combination of reduced data transmission and application-specific processing also reduces latency, enabling quicker system responses.

Minimizing Size, Weight, and Power (SWAP)

While in many image sensing applications maximizing performance metrics such as resolution and dynamic range is the priority, sensors for embedded vision are typically designed with other priorities in mind. Collected data needs to be good enough to meet the requirements of the image processing algorithm, but since the picture will not be seen, then maximizing image quality is somewhat redundant. Instead, the aim is to make the system as light and compact as possible while minimizing power requirements. This SWAP reduction enables more sensors to be deployed in devices with size and weight constraints, such as drones, while also reducing associated costs. As such, small image sensors are typically deployed, often those originally developed for smartphones. Over time, expect to see greater integration, such as stacking the sensing and processing functionalities.

Miniaturized Spectral Sensing

Embedded vision isn't restricted to conventional image sensors that detect RGB pixels in the visible range. Monochromatic sensing will likely suffice for simpler algorithms, such as edge detection for object location, reducing sensor cost. Alternatively, using more sophisticated sensors with additional capabilities arguably supports the essence of embedded vision by minimizing subsequent processing requirements.

Adding spectral resolution to image sensors can expedite subsequent processing for applications such as material identification, since the additional spectral dimension generally means a smaller training data set is required. However, meeting the SWAP requirements of most embedded vision systems is challenging for many spectral sensors due to their bulky architectures housing diffractive optics. Emerging approaches aiming to resolve this challenge include MEMS (micro electromechanical systems) spectrometers, increasing optical path length using photonic chips, and adding multiple narrow bandwidth spectral filters to image sensors using conventional semiconductor manufacturing techniques.

Event-Based Vision

Another sensing approach that aims to minimize subsequent processing requirements is event-based vision. Rather than acquiring images at a constant frame rate, with event-based vision, each pixel reports timestamps that correspond to intensity changes. As such, these sensors combine greater temporal resolution of rapidly changing regions with far less data from static background regions, thus reducing data transfer and subsequent processing requirements. Furthermore, because each pixel acts independently, the dynamic range is increased. Crucially, this alternative acquisition approach is occurring within the sensing chip, not with post-processing algorithms, enabling an associated embedded vision system to be simpler since it has less data to handle.

Further Insights

The adoption of embedded vision systems will continue to grow as more devices gain autonomous capabilities, with robotics, industrial vision, and vehicles as the dominant markets. This represents an opportunity not just for compact image sensors, optics, and processing ICs, but also for emerging sensor types such as spectral imaging and event-based vision that can reduce processing requirements and thus support embedded vision's value proposition of reducing size, weight, power, and latency.

IDTechEx's report "Emerging Image Sensor Technologies 2023-2033: Applications and Markets" explores a diverse range of image sensing technologies capable of resolutions and wavelength detection far beyond what is currently attainable. This includes the spectral and event-based sensing outlined here, but also InGaAs alternatives for short-wave infrared (SWIR) imaging, thin film photodetectors, perovskite photodetectors, wavefront imaging, and more. Many of these emerging technologies are expected to gain traction across sectors, including robotics, industrial imaging, healthcare, biometrics, autonomous driving, agriculture, chemical sensing, and food inspection.

To find out more about this report, including downloadable sample pages, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/imagesensors