I remember multi-head high speed dot matrix impact printers back in the 80s. The motors they needed to jiggle 5 or 6 hefty impact heads back and forth at about 5 times a second was impressive, and the things could shake a flimsy table apart in minutes.

Tektronix Phaser solid ink printers have been doing this for years, nothing new in that.

Is a new print head included in the ink cartridge as is standard inkjet tech? If so, that's gonna be one expensive consumable!

Starting from 1986-1987 there was a company called Array Printers AB in Sweden, and they invented exactly such a technology as this, but they used toner in their technology, not liquid inks.

The basic technology was exactly the same though, they used nozzles to apply the toner directly on paper, and then a set of 'regular' fuser heated rolls fixed it on the paper.

Here's a pdf I found around the net that presented exactly this thing, from a conference in 1998:

www.mscsoftware.com/support/library/conf/adams/euro/1998/euc98_23.pdf

Here's another presentation of how it worked, go to page 16 of their 1999 annual report:

www.flymeeurope.com/pdf/annualreport99.pdf

Around 2000...2002 the company had some tough times though, and suffered a major reorganization. I think that that company, flymeurope is somehow related to them and someone there might know more about the fate of Array Printers AB.

Even their website, array.se disappeared and is currently occupied by a domain squatter.

Since then I have not seen their technology mentioned around much, it seems the development stopped in 2002.

Here's a rough list of their patents:

http://www.patentstorm.us/assignees/Array_Printers_AB-79105-1.html

Ady

Was reading about a similar development a few weeks ago... Silverbrook Research has working hardware, and this article specifically mentions the option of licensing it to HP:

http://www.physorg.com/news93863377.html

Granted, it's not a bad idea, but as has already been pointed out, none of this is new - in and of itself.

In the 1970s, we had line printers that would put these HP beasties to shame on raw output... No colours or pics though.

There's been, obviously enough, many tries at and some good commercial use for the tech-type. What's been missing is Print Quality (PQ). The individual dice (die-plural) used in the bar are some of the highest nozzle-count in production.

I've seen the video on this unit printing, as well as a banner-making unit. It throws out near-photographic** quality as fast as the paper can be shot out of it. HP will make this available high-end first, and then as a lessons-learned template, be scaled for small-business and downwards.

As for those hellaciously expensive replacements; the head-bar is a fixture. It stays 'forever' -that leaves the real consumable: INK. Use Lots! Keep me employed. ;-)

If this methodology intrigues you, stay tuned: You haven't seen anything yet...

//

**Sorry, purists; we all know that inkjet isn't pure photo-ANYTHING. -Please accept my relative-assignment of the use...

I have visited some HP factories back in 1994 and the head of R&D told us about exactly that technology being in development and even showed an early prototype.

I always wondered why they didn't commercialize the thing and then figured that it was too much of a competition to their lazer printers.

Whatever the reason, it's always great to see something new even if the idea isn't.

Inkjet has the advantage of not needing a fuser to fix the dots on paper and therefor need a lot less energy to do the job.

Completely wrong category of printer, but it's always good seeing printing speeds stated in meters per second:

http://www.manroland.com/PROD/prod1_01_03.htm water based inks too. Apparently if these things jam a great section of the roll is pretty much instantly incinerated by the driers (or maybe that's a different model)

Some of the old bank statement printers (80s) required the continuous feed paper to be put on a special conveyor belt that accelerated the whole box at the printer before it started up so that it wouldn't simply rip off the first sheet. As they printed a great ribbon of paper was spewed out that required some poor lackies to carefully burst it and pack it into envelopes.