Another 1,000 Pages In 1 Minute

Recently, we have seen two similar technologies revolutionizing the speed of inkjet printing — HP’s Steamline and Silverbrook Memjet. The innovation factor was in creating a fixed printhead spanning the whole width of the page.

Two Israeli researchers The College of Judea and Samaria — Moshe and Nissim Einat — have developed a revolutionary printing technique called Jetrix. This technique take printing speeds even higher – up to 1,000 pages per minute — since it enables simultaneous high-speed printing of an entire page of text.

Jetrix is a mixture of Inkjet Technology and Liquid Crystal Technology. Inspired by LCDs that could instantly create an image with a screen-sized array of diodes, Moshe Einat started to wonder if the same idea could be applied to printing the whole page. Inspiration led to creation of a page-size matrix of printheads with multiple ink chambers.

These chambers are the key to the new technology. Each chamber is a tiny tank of ink connected to just a few nozzles and supplying only those nozzles. The chambers are not connected with one another, so the matrix of printheads can be created as large as the paper, without limit.

The built prototype can only print black and white, but Einat is sure the idea can be realized in full color too.

Yes, there are printer that can print as fast as 1,000 ppm, but they are room-sized. This new printing technology allows making printer more compact. We shall wait for the first full-working printer to appear.