Memjet has signed licensing deals with a variety of printer manufacturers for systems based on its high speed Waterfall heads, including several announced during the course of drupa.
It also revealed that it is working on a new technology inkjet head that it calls ‘pure MEMS’, or a mechanical head. This is at least two or three years away from reaching the market, according to Jeff Bean, Memjet’s vice president of brand & communications.
Details of how it works remain sketchy, but it will incorporate minute moving flaps at the end of nozzles, which is not an approach taken by any other heads so far. The result, according to Mr Bean, is that the heads will be able to jet a much wider range of fluids than the current Waterfall high speed thermal design,
Waterfall is currently confined to water based dye inks, although pigment and UV cured inks are planned in future.
Previous partnership and OEM announcements have included Colordyne for a high throughput labeler), Xanté for a 1066 mm wide sheet fed corrugated carton printer), Own-X (labeler and wide format printer), Lenovo and LG Electronics (both for home/office models).
The first commercial press based on the heads is the Delphax elan, an SRA2 format sheetfed printer that is being shown at drupa. It can output 500 A4 pages per minute, adding up to 3750 duplex SRA2 sheets per hour at 1600 x 800 dpi resolution. The resolution can be increased to 1600 x 1600 dpi, but the speed is halved. It uses a primer coating inline to allow the use of standard papers. The projected price for the press is ‘under $500,000 (about £310,000) with a standard feeder and high capacity stacker.
Delphax also said it will also be the master distributor for the Colordyne high speed labelers, which also use Memjet heads.
Notable recent announcements have been Canon/Océ, for a very fast A0 format roll printer called Project Velocity, which is being demonstrated as a prototype on the Canon stand in Hall 8a. This can print 500 A0 sheets per hour at 1600 x 800 dpi, on inkjet coated papers. It uses the Memjet heads together with a six-roll feed mechanism and a post-print sheeter adapted from existing Océ printers for the CAD/GIS market.
Toshiba TEC has also signed up as a licensee. A future MFP product co-developed by both companies is being exhibited at drupa. This has a scanner, photocopier and colour print engine that produces high quality colour pages at 60 pages per minute
Fuji-Xerox has also announced that it will develop a 42 inch (1066 mm) wide format printer using Memjet heads. According to Graham Leeson, European marketing director for Fujifilm Graphic Systems, the printer is initially being developed for the Far East market and there Is no indication of whether it will be sold outside those territories.
A long term marketing arrangement means that printers in the Far East are sold as Fuji-Xerox badged models, but in the rest of the world they are marketed though Xerox, with Xerox badges. So far Xerox has not indicated that it wlll sell the Memjet based printer outside the Far East.
* Memjet announced last week that it has reached a settlement with Silverbrook Research in Australia, the original Memjet inventor. Memjet will assume direct control of all research, development and commercialisation activities for the technology, including services previously provided by Silverbrook Research.
Kia Silverbrook, a co-founder of Memjet and president of Silverbrook Research, will continue to support Memjet as a special advisor to the Memjet board and as an on-going consultant.
Contact: www.memjet.com
