WTF, Memjet Partners with Fuji/Xerox, Canon/Oce & Toshiba

I was surprised to say the least!  While reading through the Drupa Press Releases (for those who don't know, DRUPA is the worlds largest print & imaging show. It's held once every four years in beautiful Dusseldorf, Germany.  I like to call it the Olympics of Print & Imaging) I read that Fuji/Xerox, Canon/Oce and Toshiba have partnered with Memjet to produce wide format systems that will incorporate Memjets Waterfall print head.

Fuji Xerox will integrate Memjets Waterfall printhead into a 42 inch roll feed wide format system for printing technical and production graphics.  Up to 1600x1600 dpi resolution. 1600x1600 will print at 150mm per second and lower resolution will print at 300mm per second.  What!  mm per second?  WTF is that?  A quick conversion will tell us that 25.4 mm equals one inch. Dang at 300mm per second you'll get full color output at 11.8 inches per second!  Thats' fast! The video on the left is the Fiji/Xerox unit at Drupa  Awesome!
Not to be outdone, Toshiba has also partnered with Memjet.  Here's a snippet from the Press Release:

Under the partnership, Toshiba TEC Corporation will initially work to integrate Memjet components into a Multi-Function Peripheral (MFP) product targeted for the office market. The MFP will feature a scanner, photocopier and color printer that produces high-quality color pages at 60 pages per minute, thanks to Memjet's revolutionary page-wide print head, controller chip, software and ink. A future MFP product co-developed by both companies is being exhibited at drupa, the world's largest print industry event in Dusseldorf, Germany, in the Memjet booth, Hall 5, E28.

So, while Fuji/Xerox and Canon/Oce are focusing their efforts on wide format, Toshiba will concentrate with incorporating the technology with MFP's.  I haven't heard of anyone writing about or seeing the "future" MFP at Drupa yet.  Wish I was there, maybe in four years, right?

Now Canon/Oce has developed a device called "Project Velocity" and it seems this will be an Oce wide format system that will also use the Memjet Waterfall print head.  In a recent press release it was stated that there would be a working wide format system on preview at Drupa for printing maps and posters at a speed of 500AO format sheets. I'm not even going to look that up. It's fast!  This system is reported to house six rolls of paper.

I've been following Memjet and Silverbrook Technologies for sometime.  Recently some of their print heads have shown up in print devices that were more the size of an A4 printer.  I've only seen one and all I can say is that the user was excited about the speed but..... let me put it this way there was an issue with the color.  However, with partnering with the like of Xerox, Canon and Toshiba and the possibility of having color matching rips, I'm thinking the sky is not the limit any more for Memjet.   

-=Good Selling=-