Master's students use concepts from my (Jeff Funk) forthcoming book (Technology Change and the Rise of New Industries) to analyze improvements in ink jet printers and in particular the latest ones from MEMS (micro-electronic mechanical systems). See my other slides for details on concepts, methodology, and other new industries.
7. Printhead is made up of 11 Integrated Circuit (IC) Chips, with a total of 70,400 nozzles (6,400 per IC Chip) and patented ‘drop triangle’ design
8. IC Chips are made from Silicon Wafer fabricated by deposition of layer material, patterning via photolithography and then etching to produce the required shapes0.72mm
9. Technology Paradigm Shift MT5009 - Analysing Hi-Tech Opportunities 6 Printing Speed: Traditional printer - Printhead scans back and forth as paper is fed through, thus limiting the printing speed as a result. The highest speed that traditional inkjet printer is achieving now is around 30-32 PPM. Memjet printer - Printhead is stationary while paper is fed through. This is made possible by the page wide Memjetprinthead with 70,400 nozzles firing up-to 774 million drops per second, that is about 1 page per second(or 60 PPM). 222.8mm wide
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11. MT5009 - Analysing Hi-Tech Opportunities 8 Technology Paradigm Shift Ink ejection rate and Moore’s Law: By looking at the HP’s printhead development timeline, the ink ejected per second from the printhead doubled every 18 months which is similar to Moore’s Law in the semiconductor industry. Memjet’s Technology (Silicon ICs, 70,400 nozzles, 5 colors)
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13. Value Proposition MT5009 - Analysing Hi-Tech Opportunities 11 Low Running Cost Superior Printing Speed
23. 30 D-size per min at 1600 x 800 dpi or 1171 m2 per hour with 42” media
24. 15 D-size per min at 1600 x 1600 dpi or 586 m2 per hour with 42” media
25. Relatively low hardware cost with laser-fast printing speed in full colorhttp://www.memjet.com/technology/video-view/memjet-wide-format-oem-print-engine-label-printing/
33. 32 inches per second or 2926 m per hour!!! http://www.memjet.com/technology/video-view/memjet-labels-oem-production-class-print-engine-pre-production/
34. MT5009 - Analysing Hi-Tech Opportunities 17 Printer Business Opportunities New Opportunities in Digital In-Production Printing for Memjet Printers: Finished Goods Distribution Center Label Printer Wide Format Printer Product Labels Convertor ROLES REPLACED BY MEMJET PRINTERS ! Final Product Manufacturing Print-On-Demand Label Printer Retailer Business Semi-finished Product Manufacturing Print-On-Demand Label Printer
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36. More space will be available for value-add manufacturing activities rather than storing pre-printed labels
37. Reduce wastage as companies tends to order labels in excess of requirement due to long turn-around time
42. Product labels can be proof-read before the manufacturing activities start thus ensuring correctly decorated products all the time
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44. Other Business Opportunities MT5009 - Analysing Hi-Tech Opportunities 20 Devices for Fast Data Transfer: Wide Format Printer – 5 printheads arranged in array High Speed Label Printer – 5 printheads arranged in series A gigabit router(1000Mbps) is used to route the print data file from PC to the individual printhead controller. As the printer gets faster and bigger(beyond the current 5 printheads, larger print data files have to be processed within a shorter time, faster transfer speed will be needed. Optical fiber networking with a transfer rate of upto 100Gbps could be the future solution. Thus, there could be business opportunities for suppliers of optical fiber networking cables, networking switches in the future.
45. Other Business Opportunities MT5009 - Analysing Hi-Tech Opportunities 21 New Formulation of Aqueous Ink: At the current printing speed of 1 page(A4) per second, the current ink used in Memjet have to dry up almost instantaneously. This is to prevent ink smudge on the next print-out that will be stacked over the previous. This opens up new opportunities for ink suppliers to work out a new formulation of ink that will be able to dry up much quicker than they are now.
46. MT5009 - Analysing Hi-Tech Opportunities 22 Technology Improvement Higher Resolution & Faster Printing Speed: In Memjet’s laboratory testing, the printhead has been found to be able to work at a firing rate of upto 100kHz. However, as the firing rate increases, the drop size will be reduced and print quality will not be optimum at current resolution of 1600x1600dpi. By making the nozzle size smaller, more dots will be able to be squeezed within the 222.8mm overall width of printhead ICs to achieve a higher printhead resolution. Add color redundancy for CCMMYYKK, 8 color channels instead of 5 currently. Provide a more vibrant printout(photo-printing) and dead nozzles compensation. With smaller and more nozzles in future Memjetprinthead, a quicker controller will also be required to drive the printhead to fire more nozzles per second through higher firing rate. Current controller : 32 bit RISC controller, 648 MHz CPU