memjet wide format - extreme speed

[Pat Whatley]

I take it the machine is running printheads that are the width of the material. It always seemed to me that moving back and forth was a waste of time and just added to the potential for problems.

 

[artbot]

from an engineering standpoint having the head race back and forth is much harder to mechanically do including the wear and tear on the machine, noise, etc.

and with a head the length of the scan, the heads could be much lower performance than current heads. slower firing, cheaper construction because the demands per jet are about forty times less. i'd assume the future will be uv versions (higher dwell/exposure time per square inch would require less uv power) ...with disposable heads for sign industry.

what this company might be missing is the media doesn't "have" to come out that fast to be a useful product. the media could slowly come out .25" per second with a bank of uv leds across the scan getting the chance to thoroughly cure the ink.

 

[TCBinaflash]

Quote from Memjet

"Memjet today announced that Lenovo will introduce the world’s fastest color office printing technology in China under a partnership with Memjet. The Memjet technology is twice the speed of the nearest competing color printer in its class"

Wow, twice as fast as a desktop printer? and only $600?

We are a good 10 years away from this entering the large format realm with real results. IMO

 

[signswi]

I sincerely doubt it's twice as fast as the big industrial corporate color copier/printers without any other advantages.

Also it's pointless for the poster market as posited above as that market is in the offset realm for any sort of reasonable volume.

Can't say I get it, though I'd love to have that kind of speed in a roll to roll solvent or latex. Would need to hire half a dozen salespeople to keep it busy!

 

[Rooster]

The HP/Scitex turbojet uses a full width print head array like the mems units do. Different heads, same style of printer.

 

[RycckG]

These very high speed printers do not use 'scanning' print heads. Most of them use 'single pass' print heads in a full width array. Kodak uses 'continuous inkjet' heads. They fire at a much faster rate than the DOD heads we are used to seeing.
I showed samples off a new printer manufactured by Sun Automation and Kodak to Rick McDonough a few weeks ago. This printer will be installed in March and prints 45" x 110" maximum sheets at nearly 5000 SPH.

I have seen 2 other printers that operate at near these speeds.. Agfa offers the Dotrix and Inca offered, and eventually withdrew, the FastJet. Both these printer are UV printers, the Sun/Kodak printer uses aqueous inks.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kufJGnnL74Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neCdigV3b9Q&feature=related

 

[mark galoob]

just fyi...Riso has inkjet printers right now that print 200 pages per minute full color...thats fast as sh*t...

print quality is getting better but not quite there yet...

mark galoob

 

[mark galoob]

Wowzers...just saw the video...thats impressive and the banner looked like it was on a gloss paper...couldnt tell about the 11x17 photos though...if they truely can do this on gloss, they have a product that will rock the market place...

mark galoob

 

[Sticky Signs]

The memjet might now be available yet but this thing is.

http://s977.photobucket.com/albums/ae259/stickydan/?action=view&current=IMG_0362.mp4

The company my brother works for just picked one up.

 

[iladi]

i usualy copy / print large format drawings. a dye mutoh RJ900 is usualy OK, but when you have a bunch of 15 students who have 7 to 10 sqmeters each, all in the same time, a speed like this is very usefull. i just hope it will be not that much expensive, as i understand the label machine is around 17k

 

[andy]

That brings back memories. I believe one was called the Michaelangelo(sp?). They sent me a sample of a print on a piece of carpet once. Looked great for its time.
Always wondered what ever happened to those. I wanted one but as I recall they where very expensive.

Ah ha, that name does ring a rather large bell

As I remember one of the "benefits" this machine had is you could wheel it around.... if you wanted to paint one of those fancy "muriel" things you simply setup the contraption in front of your blank wall surface and then hit "start".

I guess there must have been some serious "issues" with this way of doing things... the machines vanished pretty quickly.

 

[synergy_jim]

memjet is the real deal. I have been following these guys for over 2 years. Their technology, which will likely be licensed to mfg. like HP, Epson etc. is going to change the industry weather we like it or not. No moving parts except the feed??? whats not to like about this. Sure they have a lot of work to do on inks, drying, and a few other things, but mark my words, this will be a reality very soon.

 

[signswi]

The memjet might now be available yet but this thing is.

http://s977.photobucket.com/albums/ae259/stickydan/?action=view&current=IMG_0362.mp4

The company my brother works for just picked one up.

Is that an AGFA M-Press Tiger as the file title would indicate?

 

[copythat]

Hmmmm

I could do the same demonstration with my valuejet, with a straight on shot, with pre-printed media that I'm just rolling through the machine.[/QUOTE]


Wow, maybe thats why there was no volume! Good catch Flame.



Sign Up!

 

[artbot]

this is the first video that i've seen that shows the guts of the wide format printer. they are demo-ing a rigid stock box printer. near the end of the video they open up the top of the printer to expose the array (5 heads staggered). what will roland/mimaki/epson do when this thing can handle latex ink?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ImC9gnuwBc

 

[Custom_Grafx]

They have a huge collection of videos on their website I just found.

Amazing stuff.

http://www.memjet.com/technology/videos/

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Here are the details of the origins and the tech.

http://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/Inkjet-laser-Memjet-Fast-apf-2695371678.html?x=0

funny line at the end by the ceo... "yes, you can now get your junk mail in colour".

 

[Rooster]

Prints too fast for a latex or solvent ink (heaters would have to be 12' long ovens). I'm not sure the head itself could handle the particulate size of a UV ink either.

It's coming for sure, but it's not here yet.

I like that heads are user replaceable.

 

[artbot]

i've wondered it they've considered slowing the thing down and altering the amount of jets. forget exactly but i think the heads are set up for 1800dpi! and 1 picoliter! yikes that's small.

i'd be happy with a 5 picoliter 600dpi machine that could do a 4x8 in a few minutes. this thing would do a 1800x1800 4x8 in 12 seconds.

 

[RycckG]

The Memjet uses dye based aqueous inks. It is also a Drop-on-Demand jet head. Memjet currently focuses their interest in the high resolution arena at 1600 dpi. Kodak, on the other hand, has a well established set of heads branded as their "Versamark", that spans the gamut of 120 dpi up to 600 dpi that actually print at the crazy speed of 1000 ft p/ minute. These are used primarily to produce 4 cl direct mailers, bank statements and phone bills. The print head technology exists, the printing industry needs the OEM's to assemble them into a finished printer.

-Rick


http://graphics.kodak.com/US/en/Pro...Versamark/Imprinting_Systems/9100/default.htm