Memjet CEO Discusses 'Waterfall' Printhead Technology for Wide-Format Market

Len Lauer

SAN DIEGO — March 1, 2016 — Ahead of FESPA, Memjet Chairman and CEO Len Lauer discusses inkjet technology and the impact that inkjet presses are having on the wide-format market.

Hello Mr. Lauer! Memjet technology will be a part of several FESPA-exhibits again. What can we expect to see?
Our partners will be showing our single-pass or "waterfall" printhead technology for high-speed and high-quality inkjet printing. We have multiple partners putting our solutions for wide-format printing on center stage of course, e.g. for CAD, graphic prints or signage, but we will also bring label and commercial printing systems along. Plus: Many partners will be showing upgrades and enhancements to their Memjet-powered products that will open up new markets, applications and business opportunities for wide-format print shops.

Just to be clear: Memjet won’t show any printing presses, right?
Correct. We leave that to our OEM partners such as Canon, Océ, RTI or Xanté. Memjet itself does not manufacture presses. We develop and sell printhead technology for high-speed inkjet printing, as well as specially optimized "high-speed" ink, software and drive electronics.

What are the benefits of these?
Our OEM partners use Memjet technology to build devices that print significantly faster than other presses and offer excellent 1,600 dpi quality. Our printheads have considerably more nozzles than other heads, and they’re built for single-pass printing. That enables them to print at speeds as high as 152 mm per second, with a native resolution of 1,600 times 1,600 dpi. But that’s not all: The technology is also very cost-efficient. The TCO for Memjet wide-format presses can be as low as 50 per cent of the TCO of other digital devices. Having said that, Memjet-powered wide-format presses redefine the possibilities of today’s printers.

And what do end-users do with these presses?
We see more and more end-users who leverage Memjet-powered presses to offer new services to their clients, for example when they expand their offering beyond CAD and graphics and into signage. Others use our partners’ products to bring packaging production back in-house. With Memjet-powered presses, they can easily produce short-run, customized digital packaging at very low costs — e.g. to create new touchpoints or optimize customer experiences.

What trends will you be looking for at FESPA?
I am particularly interested in how the markets of our OEM partners are developing. Trends like digitalization, the boom in e-commerce or the still-evolving need for customized or even personalized labels, packages and print-outs are driving the demand for our technology. Therefore I am very interested in what is happening in Europe in these areas.

About Memjet
Memjet created a whole new category of inkjet printing when it introduced its revolutionary printhead technology. These color printheads use a unique "waterfall" technology that fires millions of ink drops per second. The waterfall technology and related components hold approximately 3,500 global patents, demonstrating both the innovation and the value of this solution.

Memjet has since grown to become a global leader in this area, offering color printing technologies that provide remarkable speeds and affordability to a growing number of customers and markets alike, with a focus on desktop, wide-format, and production applications.

Memjet maintains its corporate office in San Diego, and has further offices in Dublin, Sydney, Taipei, Singapore and Boise, Idaho. The company is privately held.

Source: Memjet.