Updated 26 May, 2012, 4:18 pm IST

Memjet Claims Breakthrough in Inkjet Printing

24 Mar, 2007, 4:00 pm IST | by Priyanka Pradhan |

Memjet color printing technology, that claims to be the first to combine high speed and quality color at a leading price/performance, has been announced by Silverbrook Research, at the Global Ink Jet Printing Conference in Prague.

The new technology prints full-color images at 60 pages per minute (ppm), many times the inkjet industry standard. The technology, which will be a fraction of the price of high-speed color laser devices, will soon be available for the home/office, photo-kiosk and label markets.

The technology, which has been in development for more than 10 years, is backed by more than 1,400 U.S. patents, with about 2,000 pending.

Bill McGlynn, CEO of Memjet’s home and office business said, "Conventional wisdom is that you cannot have high speed, quality color and low cost all at once. This technology turns that notion on its head, making page-wide color printing practical and cost-effective. We believe this breakthrough technology will change the printing industry by eliminating the cost and performance barriers of color, and by allowing both incumbents and non-incumbents to compete on a new playing field."

The technology can print full-color, photo-quality images (4x6" or A6) at 30 ppm, full-color and black-and-white business communication (8.5x11" or A4) at 60 ppm, and draft mode at 90 ppm. This compares to industry standards of about 1 to 2 ppm for 4x6" photos, 10 to 15 ppm for cost-effective 'business' color, and 30 ppm for draft mode. The technology also replaces similar-speed, 200 dpi label-printing technologies with a high-resolution color alternative.

A customized driver chip controls each printhead and can calculate 900 million dots per second. Because the Memjet technology prints the whole page at a time, without any warm-up time, the optimized system virtually eliminates waiting for a print job.

The technology prints at native 1600x1600 dpi full resolution with the industry’s smallest drop size (just over one picoliter or one trillioneth of a liter). This design enables high-quality color photos, labels and business documents with virtually instantaneous drying times and low operating costs.

The Memjet-based printer is expected to retail for under $300. The ink pricing is expected to lead the market and help eliminate the price penalty for printing color.

Tags: Silverbrook Research , Memjet technology , Global Ink Jet Printing Conference , high-resolution images