14 DAY TRIAL // We all want very fast printers that offer very good results in terms of the printed material. And the market leader in computer printers, Hewlett-Packard Co, seems to have successfully tackled this problem, by developing a new inkjet technology which cuts photo printing time in half.
Thus, the new printing head will allow a 4-by-6-inch photo to be printed in about 14 seconds, which would be more than good enough for most home users, according to the analysts. The new technology will also provide a very high quality for the printed images, because, after all, it's not just the printing speed that has a great importance, but also the quality and the associated costs.
Inkjet heads are built in thin layers, one layer heating the ink and sending it through microscopic nozzles in another layer. Up until now, HP has made the layers separately and assembled them mechanically. In the new heads, the assembly step is eliminated. The nozzle layer is created on top of the lower layer by photolithography, the same process that is used to make computer chips.
The new process is much more precise, making for more efficient print heads with more nozzles that print faster. The new printers have more than 3,900 nozzles spitting out 93 million ink droplets per second.
We're very curious to see for ourselves what this technology is really capable of, and that is why we'll try to test it as soon as possible, in order to be able to provide you with more details regarding its performances.