Memjet Printer

Memjet Printer Prototype in action




Memjet A4/Letter prototype printer vs. a Canon MX7600 color inkjet printer

Memjet Printers Now Expected by 2009

Silverbrook's 60-pages-per-minute printer shocked the technology industry in March of 2007, when the startup disclosed its innovative inkjet technology.

Silverbrook's technology (which will be commercialized under the business name Memjet) was supposed to be released in early 2008, according to what company executives told me then. Now, a company spokeswoman says that the "A4/letter printhead and related components" will be shipped to OEMs by the end of this year, with products slated for sometime in 2009. This is consistent with "early timetables," according to the spokeswoman.

Memjet isn't going to manufacture the printers themselves. Instead, they're going to sell the components to OEMs, who can put their own stamp on the technology.

Delays associated with new technology are nothing new. Still, in 2007, Memjet officials promised: a photo printer, which the company hoped to sell for less than $150 by the end of the year or early 2008; the 8.5-inch x 11-inch (A4) color inkjet, due to arrive at the end of 2008 for under $200; a label printer; and a large-format photo printer, expected to cost about $5,000, and capable of printing poster-sized prints at rapid speed.

The Memjet technology uses a series of individual MEMS-based inkjet nozzles, fabricated using conventional semiconductor manufacturing techniques. Each chip measures 20 millimeters across and contains 6,400 nozzles, with five color channels, the company said. A separate driver chip calculates 900 million picoliter-sized drops per second. For a standard A4 letter printer, the result is a total of 70,400 nozzles.

However, the Memjet spokeswoman said that the company's technology is still being shown off to potential customers. "The company has been doing demonstrations for business partners and potential partners for many months, including demonstrations at DRUPA last month." DRUPA is billed as the "largest printing equipment exhibition in the world," she said.

Silverbrook's Memjet Technology Announced

Doubling Inkjet Print Speeds

Silverbrook Research (Australia)announces a revolutionary Memjet inkjet printer technology.
With the new technology presented March 15th, 2007 by Lyra Research, They offered a glimpse of inkjet printer technology printing at speeds of one page per second. Rivaling/exceeding current laser printer print speeds.

Details to Be Released Global Ink Jet Printing Conference

The technology has not been publicly released . Kia Silverbrook, the chairman and CEO of Silverbrook Research, plans to discuss the technology at the Global Ink Jet Printing Conference this week in the Czech Republic.

Technology

The technology utilizes wider printheads (See Metawatch Blog Inkjet Speed Breakthrough ) 8 inches in the case for a letter-size printer eliminating the mechanical head assembly on traditional inkjet printers today.

Memjet technology also uses powerful microchips that reduce the time it takes a printer to process information, like photos, sent to it from a computer. These microchips allow for offloading the traditional CPU from pre-print processing.

Licensing

Silverbrook Research, an Australian research-and-development firm, has received over 1,000 U.S. patents in the last decade and more than 400 last year specifically related to inkjet technology, said Steve Hoffenberg, Lyra's director

Silverbrook, Hoffenberg said, plans to license the technology to a series of companies it has set up that would then license it to other firms.

Home Based Products

Eventual products could include home printers, photo printers, wide-format printers etc. A home inkjet printer could be priced as low as $199, Hoffenberg said, which would include up to five ink tanks .Current prototypes show the tanks hold about five times more ink than the typical cartridge today.

A design for a photo printer, with a possible price of about $149, Hoffenberg said

Seeing is believing

A video of a prototype home Memjet inkjet printer at work is available online at www.lyra.com/lh3m.nsf/memjet or Google video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996259363769507120&q=memjet.