Turning inkjet printing on its ear

[unixronin]

yndy pointed out this announcement about Australian company Silverbrook Research's new high-speed pagewidth inkjet printing technology.  Some technical questions exist, but it looks as though this could revolutionize inkjet printing.  How would you like a $200 A4/letter size printer that prints one full-color page per second?  Maybe a photo printer that spits out a 4"x6" full-bleed print every two seconds?  How about a 51" wide-format printer that prints photographic images that can print a four-FOOT by six-FOOT full-color photo poster in six to twelve seconds?

Comments

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Only the most hardcore sysadmins look forward to printers -- I salute you.

[tww1fa]

Just be sure to use it every day, lest one nozzle on the head clog and you need to replace it.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that'd suck. I'm curious how they've solved the nozzle-clogging problem. (Or if they have.)

[unix-jedi.livejournal.com]

How much will ink carts cost for *that*? :)

And I quote

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

"The desktop printer's individual color ink cartridges hold 50ml of ink, an almost unprecedented amount in a consumer product, and will sell for less than $20 each, the company predicts. Most existing inkjet printers from companies like Epson use ink cartridges with a capacity of about 10ml, and prices of $15 to $30."

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

According to the article, Silverbrook plans to sell 50ml ink cartridges for around $20, compared with HP, Epson, Canon et al selling typically 10ml ink cartridges for $30-$50.

[unix-jedi.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that was my sarcasm, given the racket the other printer guys have gotten into (and are apparently addicted to).

(unix_jedi <-- HP OfficeJet v40 boat anchor owner)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'll bet your OfficeJet v40 hasn't half the boat-anchordom of our DeskJet 2500CM. :p

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

All the papers look very very shiny. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. Or is it just the wet ink?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Certainly all the photo papers looked shiny. I'd guess it's coated paper; the article says it works best on microporous paper, on which the ink dries almost instantly.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

I recall seeing a continuous ink system that emptied a 500 foot roll in under 5 minutes. It black ink on news print and was meant for that market. They had a bin after it that stacked it up and it took another 30 minutes to roll it back up. It was compatible with the industry standard paper handling systems and they said it would feed into that, be cut, folded, collated, bound, etc at the end. It got rid of the need to make a stamping. This was in the early 80s.

Wow, they've recreated the full width dot matrix printer all modernized. It had a huge head of single pins that spanned the width of the paper, two offset rows. Hideously expensive and I can't recall who made it. Very high speed. As fast as a band printer but with graphics capability.

[darthgeek.livejournal.com]

The whole website seems very tabloidish to me. Maybe it's just the style of writing.