Back in November 2010, we published an article about Memjet, suggesting it might be a disruptive inkjet technology to watch. We followed that up with an interview with former HP exec Bill McGlynn, now running Memjet's Home and Office business. Then there was the Andy Tribute video in February predicting that we might see Memjet emerge as a competitive and disruptive force in the production inkjet market.

At the end of April, Delphax Technologies, a provider of high-speed digital monochrome printing, touted its collaboration with Memjet as its ticket to the digital color printing game. Did Andy have a crystal ball or insider info?  Either way, this announcement caught our interest and we caught up with Dieter Schilling, CEO/President of Delphax Technologies, to find out more.

Delphax has been in business for 30 years as of this year.  Its parent company, Check Technology Corporation, bought Delphax Systems from Xerox in the 2000 timeframe and changed the name of the combined company to Delphax Technologies.  The joined company has about 130 employees, corporate headquarters in Minneapolis, Manufacturing/Engineering in Toronto, and sales offices in London and Paris.

Schilling says, "We have scaled our company to meet the 'New Normal.' We built our business on checks, but that is no longer a growth market. So we scaled the business to what we needed, and about three years ago, began with some Voice-of-the-Customer (VOC) interviews to figure out how we could capitalize on a printing equipment industry that is obviously going digital and color. We wanted to use customer insight to start us down the path of determining where is it, what is it, and what are we going to do.  We also partnered with an industry research firm to help us develop a strategy, and then we set out to find the technology best suited for that strategy. Our proprietary Electron Beam Imaging (EBI) technology, while tried and true, robust and low cost, could not be adapted to the color market without significant R&D investment – much beyond what would make economic sense. That search led us to Memjet."

Delphax saw the Memjet partnership as an opportunity to develop a high quality, low cost color solution for the commercial/industrial printing market.  Schilling adds, "We feel this technology, combined with our front-end paper handling and back-end finishing solutions, is going to bring the positive attributes of low cost, high quality productivity to the average service provider that can't afford the multi-million dollar solutions from the large equipment vendors, allowing them to get into the world of the competitive cost that inkjet provides, along with the quality and color component."  

Delphax plans to have a product to show at drupa 2012, and will be prepared to take orders, with delivery in early 2013. Schilling declined to provide details on the exact price point, but said, "A big part of our strategy is to be the price/performance leader on acquisition costs, and competitive on running costs."

Target markets for this printer will include direct mail, book publishing and transactional printing along with checks. While the company still earns 60% of its revenues from checks, Schilling believes this device will broaden its outlook. Part of the development process is a migration from a data center (IPDS) workflow to PDF workflows. Schilling says, "Everything we are working on in terms of the front end is geared toward PDF, and particularly, to be able to accurately ingest unmodifiable PDFs." He points out that many companies, especially in Europe, are reluctant to release customer data such as is required in an IPDS workflow due to concerns about breaches of customer data.

While at this point Delphax is architecting its own front ends, Schilling says they will be compatible with the GMCs and EFIs of the world, totally transparent and flexible. He adds, "JDF is on our radar and we will have the hooks, but I am not sure how much of a driver that will be for the initial types of products we see this device producing."

The company also understands the need to partner closely with other players in the industry and give the customer one target at which to point the finger in terms of developing an integrated solution and/or if things don't go as planned. It didn't appear to me that much of this work had been started, but will likely be a priority as drupa creeps closer. Schilling did express an intention to be demonstrating an end-to-end solution there (or at least talk about them in more detail), as well as at Graph Expo 2012.

Getting into the more technical details, Schilling explained that the number and configuration of Memjet heads used in a specific printer will vary, depending on the applications to be produced, how wide the web is, and how many channels are required. Does the customer need to use specialty inks, PMS colors, MICR? He adds, "It is designed to to be a modular approach, so you could pop heads in according to what your applications and needs are going to be."

Schilling concluded by saying, "The bottom line is that in the high end market, not that many units are sold every year.  Our strategy is to get into a part of the market where there is more opportunity for units, and you are not betting everything on one or two sales.  Andy Tribute hit on that perfectly in his video, 'Printers are on the fence, saying, my publishers and customers don't even know what they want or what is available. Why would I spend millions of dollars on equipment if I don't know whether it is going to take or not?'  We give them a more affordable option to test out those markets."

Interestingly, in researching this article, I came across a Tech Observer blog post from 2007, documenting a conversation with Kodak CEO Antonio Perez, who said he didn't think much of the Memjet technology, dismissing it by saying that page-wide arrays don't work because the nozzles, which don't move, can't be cleaned: "Inevitably, Perez says, some nozzles in an array will clog or fail, and that will mess up the image on the printed page."

Fast forward four years, or five until drupa, and we wonder if Perez will still have the same opinion. As the Tech Observer points out, Silverbrook (the Memjet founder) and Perez are both obviously smart, informed thinkers.  From the 2007 vantage point, it was hard to say who would turn out to be right.  I guess we are about to find out!