A world leader and pioneer in developing digital inkjet technologies, Xaar plc, will unveil its breakthrough ‘greyscale’ technology to the US market for the first time at The Imaging Science and Technology’s NIP18: International Conference on Digital Printing Technologies. Visitors to the conference will be able to learn more about Xaar’s revolutionary greyscale printing technique at the exhibition on 1-2 October. Unique to Xaar, this technology is designed to deliver near-photographic quality print in colour or black and white and is already in evidence in the market in applications such as the.factory from Dotrix. The Leopard printhead, the first commercial product from Xaar to use this technology, will enable high quality printing onto plastics such as smart cards and ID cards and other packaging and industrial applications The greyscale effect is achieved by firing multiple droplets from the same nozzle in rapid succession, rather than a single droplet as occurs in binary applications. The salvo of droplets merge 'in flight' to form pixels of variable size and enable the production of an enhanced resolution. The result is that the variation in the droplet size creates a much higher apparent visual image. This means that near-photographic quality is achievable using relatively low print resolutions, a solution that will be welcomed by printers, particularly in packaging and decorative industrial printing environments. Beta testing of the Leopard is due to end in Quarter 3 2002 and successful completion of this stage will allow the printhead to be made available to the general market. In addition to the greyscale educational exhibition booth, Xaar’s Manager of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Werner Zapka, will address conference delegates with the company’s research and development into large or ‘square’ drop printing, a technique which once commercialised will be of interest to applications that require large drop volumes for low resolution, high optical density printing on strongly absorbing substrates.