Speedy Tech Could Print Books in Minutes

Oct. 30, 2006 — An innovative printer head may lead to affordable printers that spew out a thousand pages per minute.

The JeTrix printer head, invented by Nissim Einat and a team of researchers at The College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel Israel, could be on the market in two years in printers costing between $500 and $1,000 each.

Such printers could lead to fast, high-quality photo printing as well as on-demand printed media. Imagine customized newspapers and magazine and instant books printed by a vending machine.

"Think of such a machine in an airport terminal. You slide your credit card, chose a pocket book for your flight, and get it warm from the printer in less than a minute," said Moshe Einat, senior lecturer at the college and a member of the research team.

Einat's machine could reduce backups at the office printer, too.

Today, even the best printers used for business purposes cost anywhere between $1,100 and $15,000 and max out at about 50 pages per minute.

The speed is limited, in part, by the printer head.

For starters, it's usually much smaller than the page and takes time to scan back and forth while applying the ink.

The other challenge has to do with the nozzles.

The ink is typically pooled in a main reservoir and distributed through a chamber, or manifold, that has many branching tubes, each leading to a nozzle.

To get uniform drops, the pressure of the ink in this system must be precisely regulated and maintained — a delicate task that becomes more difficult as the number of nozzles and the size of the nozzle array increases.

The JeTrix overcomes conventional limitations in two ways. First, it does not have a main reservoir or manifold that requires delicate pressure maintenance. Secondly, it is not limited by size. In fact, it can be as large as piece of paper and theoretically has a nozzle for every pixel.

The difference has to do with the way Einat and his team built the printer head. They turned to the same technology used to manufacture computer chips — by etching the printer head out of silicon wafer chips.

Instead of a small array of nozzles that makes many scans to print a page, the JeTrix design is a flat, two-dimensional panel designed to be as big as the page and eject all of the necessary ink simultaneously.

Although the approach has a number of innovative features, it also has limitations said Dr. Ross Allen, an internationally recognized technologist based in St. Helena, CA, who has 40 patents in imaging and printing technology.

"Inkjet print heads typically make two to eight passes over the same pixel row in order to hide any defects caused by nozzles that don't operate or meet drop ejection specifications," said Allen. "If Einat's print head lays down all of the ink at once, the printed page could show artifacts or flaws from 'bad' nozzles."

Printing in color could also present a challenge.

"You'll need black, cyan, magenta and yellow page-size print heads printing in precise registration," said Allen.

Finally, he said, no matter how fast a printer head applies ink, it doesn't get around the basic limitation that the ink must dry before the page is stacked the paper tray.