*NEWS*PRINTING 1,000 PAGES A MINUTE !

[Anonymous]

Israeli printing technology could deliver 1,000 pages a minute
Imagine
a bookstore that prints your purchases while you settle the bill or a
personalized newspaper that contains only the news you want to read.
Such expedient printing may soon become a reality using a new Israeli
technology that will enable printing 1,000 pages a minute at affordable
prices.

Two researchers from The College of Judea and Samaria –
Moshe and Nissim Einat – have developed a revolutionary printing
technique called Jetrix, which enables simultaneous high- speed
printing of an entire page of text. The technology combines printing
and Liquid Crystal Technology (LCD) methods to make a page-sized
printing array that emits ink instead of light.”We are reducing the
limitations of printing heads,” explains Moshe Einat, senior lecturer
at the college’s Department of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering.Einat’s inspiration for rethinking print methods came from
flat-screen display technologies. In the past display screens used a
cathode ray tube to ‘scan’ the picture across the screen similar to the
way a printer fills a page with text. With LCDs a screen-sized array of
light emitting diodes creates the displayed picture and simultaneously
changes to display each new image. Einat posed the question whether the
same concept could not be applied to a printed page?”If you can do it
with light, why not with ink?” he asked.

Early printers used a
continuous jet of ink to print on pages but were later replaced by
modern Drop On Demand (DOD) printers in which a traveling head of tiny
nozzles squirts ink at the page. The dots combine to produce the
desired print. Current printers use a single print head that scans
across the page but mechanical and physical limitations present a range
of barriers that cap print speeds.Combining a multitude of ink nozzles
together into larger print heads is complex and fraught with technical
difficulties. Einat’s solution is a matrix of printer heads fed by
multiple ink chambers. With a matrix as large as the page, each head is
fired only once per page allowing a much longer relaxation time and
negating the need for a scanning head.The key to the new technology is
the way ink is fed to the print head. The Jetrix print head has no
manifold and is comprised of segments containing micro-reservoirs of
ink each connected to just a few nozzles. Each segment

only provides ink to a few local nozzles making the segments autonomous.
With
no direct connection between the different segments the matrix size can
be increased without limit creating a print head as large as the
paper.”You can make a matrix of as many segments as you want,” Einat
told ISRAEL21c. The result is simultaneous printing of the entire
matrix on the page. Released from the limitations of relaxation times
and mechanical scanning high print speeds can be achieved without a
loss in quality.In Einat’s view, the idea is more than just an
innovation; it marks a turning point in core technology for printers.
In the past print speed was limited by the rate at which ink could be
transferred from the ink source to the page. The Jetrix head removes
that barrier and the limiting factor will now become another part of
the print process, such as the rate at which paper can be supplied to
or output from the printer, or the time it takes the ink to dry on the
pages.So far Einat has made a matrix of 12 x 12 centimeters that
demonstrated the theory is sound and that the capillary action is fast
enough to keep the nozzles supplied with ink. Despite its size the
prototype matrix contains57,600 nozzles, so small that the delicate
capillaries and nozzles were created with the same processes used to
manufacture computer chips. The print head works only in black and
white but Einat is confident that it can be adapted for color printing
too.

Development has cost $140,000 funded by Israel’s Industry
and Trade Ministry and ‘angel money’. Costs are kept low because much
of the technology is based on existing LCD know-how, a fact that will
also keep down the costs fo.full-size working printers. Current top of
the range printers used to print bank statements and utility bills are
able to print over a thousand pages a minute but the room-sized
printers can cost over $100,000 a piece.Einat predicts that a simple
printer using his technology should be far more affordable, and even
within the budget of home users. Such flexible and expedient printing
has a wide range of applications.”Anything that is printed today can be
done with it,” Einat says.Rapid printing could lead to a variety of ‘on
demand’ printing products. Bookstores could print books as the customer
waits, and at 1,000 pages a minute, the wait wouldn’t be very long.
Printing on demand would make significant savings for publishers that
today often see 40 percent of books remain on the shelves in
stores.’They could print right there in the shop, fresh off the press,’
says Einat who also envisions vending machines at airports printing
books for travelers as they wait to board a flight.The print method may
also give a new lease of life to newspapers and magazines that are
losing customers to Internet-based media. A press could run off
thousands of personalized newspapers that contain only the news topics
that interest each individual reader.The Jetrix print head was first
presented publicly at the Global Entrepolis Singapore in 2006 and since
then has been generating broad interest from the print industry.
Several global printer companies are keeping a keen eye ondevelopments
with the expectation of a full-working printer. In the meantime Einat
plans to build an even larger prototype before moving on to a full-size
working printer.Should the technology prove itself, it may also expand
into other industries. Einat theorizes that the same principle could be
used to print microcircuits, which would revolutionize that industry,
although he concedes that at the moment, that is still a long way off. 

[Author]

June 5, 2007 at 1:32 PM