New Inkjet Technology 5 To 10 Times Faster

sarahbau writes "Silverbrook's new Memjet technology can print 60 full-color pages per minute. Instead of having a print head that moves side to side like current inkjets, the print head spans the full width of the page, containing 70,400 nozzles in the A4 version. They also have a large-format printer (51") that prints 6" to 1 foot per second. Products are expected to start shipping in late 2007: first a photo/label printer, then a home/office printer for less than $300 in 2008." The video is amazing. If it's for real, the technology would be disruptive at half the speed and twice the price.

Comments

Re:Ink

[Tatarize]

Well on the bright side, this new printer will break other ways less often. The head doesn't move so no moving head problems. Though, to be fair, if you went several weeks without printing anything at the margins wouldn't the printer clog at the margin? Roughly, every part of the page has it's own printer head, isn't that going to let some of the heads stick without the others?

Not new...and perhaps a maintenance nightmare

[PalmKiller]

OK, so let me get this obvious marketing monster straight. They are re-inventing the old mainframe line printer (dot matrix that printed a line at a time) as a inkjet printer. Thats all well and good, cause all us old timers know that a line printer can really slam out the pages...but the inkjet part is scary. I have enough trouble with the little heads on inkjet cartridges drying out, how have they tackled that real world problem on this full width head? Also since its obviously going to need a new head from time to time, isn't this full width head gonna be much more expensive? If you print a lot of text, I say get a decent laser printer for fast printing and use cheaper standard inkjet for what little color you do. if you print huge amount of color, look at dye sublimation, solid ink or color laser printer. If you print very little, then just get the standard inkjet. IMHO of course.

A secretive company

[femto]

Here's an article about Silverbrook.

They are located in the inner city suburb of Sydney in Australia. They are also secret to the point of seeming to be paranoid. I know lots of people who have interviewed with them and some employees. You have to sign an NDA just to get an interview with them. A shame really. As the article said, they do high tech stuff, but are so secretive there is little contribution to or cross pollination with the rest of Australia's high tech sector.

As far as I can tell they do a fair bit of MEMS stuff. A lot of the people they employ are integrated circuit designers. I don't think they are much into Free Software philosophy.

Re:Really skeptical at best...

[mapkinase]

This is one of the most ridiculous pretentious replies I have ever seen on /.

I am actually stunned that for this particular subject Digg's discussion (which is "like", usually "amazingly" worse in quality than /.) have more quality to it.

"Paper not visible". Have you ever seen a printer before in your life?

"Patent whore". What is wrong with inventing something and selling it to other companies, so OTHER companies make products of it?

More facts, please, less baseless insinuations.

BTW, this is the first time I am hearing about this company. Now THAT is suspicious.