The end of moving inkjet heads

The completely refurbished HP Experience Centre in Barcelona was the location for the introduction of new large format printers without the moving inkjet heads.

HP Pagewide Technology consists of a vast number nozzles on a stationary printhead that spans the paper. The paper moves, the printhead doesn´t. It is the same technology used for wide format rotation printers such as the T400 and the T800. Until recently the technology allowed printers to produce high volumes with a quality incomparable to wide format poster print with moving printheads. HP introduced this thermal inkjet printhead 8 years ago at Drupa.

The development of the stationary printhead has continued over the past years. The head presented by HP now with so-called HDNA technology has a 2400 dpi resolution. Eight years ago the maximum resolution was 300 dpi. HP used this technique for wide format printers for the builders and architect market, to print technical drawings in colour. The Pagewide printers are meant for exactly that.

HP has a Pagewide printer in various sizes. The biggest, the XL8000 can print up to 1 meter wide and has a speed of 30 A1 pages a minute. The technology shows what wide format prints for inside and outside will be printed like this in the future. Because of the fact that these type of wide format printers have less moving parts the print speed will increase significantly and the margin of error will decrease. Cost price of a wide format colour poster will undoubtedly be lower in the near future. This opens new doors for entrepreneurs.