Santa Clara, Calif.; May 16, 2008 - FUJIFILM Dimatix, the world's leading supplier of drop-on-demand inkjet printheads for industrial applications, today announced it has developed the Q-Class, an advanced-design piezoelectric drop-on-demand inkjet platform around which it is building a new family of printheads, 2.5-inch wide quad printhead assemblies and modular, monochrome printhead clusters for high-speed scanning and single pass printer architectures.
 
In addition, FUJIFILM Dimatix announced it will unveil the first two members of the new Q-Class product family - the 1000 dpi Q-256/10 and 600 dpi Q-256/30 - at Drupa 2008, the world's premier exhibition for the printing industry taking place in Düsseldorf, Germany May 29 through June 11, 2008.
 
At Drupa, FUJIFILM Dimatix will demonstrate eight-bezel mounted and precisely registered printheads in a nested configuration, forming a 5-inch wide printhead cluster to demonstrate Q-Class scalability. The new Q-Class products will be shown along with a new comprehensive range of supporting inkjet systems components, including driver electronics, data path and head pneumatics module. These and many of the company's other inkjet products and technologies will be on display and demonstrated in Hall 8b, stand B03.
 
A 'New Era' of Scalability
The Q-Class family marks the first of a new breed of scaleable printhead configuration. These new inkjet devices feature hybrid construction that merges the durability of FUJIFILM Dimatix' laminate carbon construction, combined with the accuracy of the company's silicon MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) fabrication techniques.
 
The new hybrid construction has enabled FUJIFILM Dimatix to develop high-performance printheads, printhead assemblies and printhead clusters that deliver superb jetting straightness in significantly smaller and a more tightly packed design than was previously possible.
 
"The combination of FUJIFILM Dimatix-pioneered silicon MEMS fabrication with our proven carbon materials set is ushering in a new era of Piezo DOD printhead scalability, resulting in the most versatile inkjet platform yet developed for industrial printing and macro-feature fluid deposition applications," said Marc Torrey, Vice President, Marketing.
 
"The speed, accuracy and scalability of the new Q-Class platform will set new standards for both scanning and single pass printer designs, providing significantly expanded capabilities that systems developers will need to meet tomorrow's high-speed printing requirements," Torrey asserted.
 
As an example, each of the new Q-Class 256-printheads announced today is just 8 mm wide - less than one-third inch - including mounting hardware. FUJIFILM Dimatix' hallmark high-accuracy, low-crosstalk design and the new thin profile of Q-Class printheads allows them to be stacked in close proximity to each other.
 
The use of durable silicon and laminate carbon construction also makes Q-Class products well-suited to jetting inks compatible with a broad range of graphics and fluid deposition applications, and at temperatures up to 70°C. Presently, these include organic solvents and the range of UV-curable liquid and paste inks.   Future models will exploit the robust construction to support aqueous and hot-melt ink formulations for graphics printing and more exotic functional fluids for fluid deposition applications. Moreover, variable drop sizes of up to 200 pl will also be possible within the extended capabilities of the product design.
 
New Q-256 Printheads
The new Q-Class hybrid printheads provide 256 inline, individually addressable nozzles with native droplet sizes of 10 and 30 pl. Precision registration points on each unit allow system developers to nest multiple assemblies to achieve the highest printing densities currently available.
 
     The Q256/10 Printhead, offering resolutions up to 1200 dpi, is aimed at near photographic, industrial printing applications requiring robust and reliable jetting performance, such as close-up viewed graphics, labels and packaging.
 
     The Q256/30 Printhead is aimed at applications requiring versatile, high performance and reliable jetting at resolutions up to 900 dpi, including wide format graphics, addressing and secondary packaging.
 
VersaDropT Technology Support
Both new Q-Class printheads also support myriad VersaDropT operating modes to deliver unprecedented throughput and versatility. VersaDropT jetting technology takes advantage of the inherent high-frequency response of FUJIFILM Dimatix' printhead design, enabling each of hundreds of nozzles in one or more piezoelectric printhead arrays to deliver a desired amount of fluid in each ink droplet.
 
In binary printing mode, the Q256/10 Printhead ejects adjustable 10 to 30 pl drop sizes at firing rates up to 50 kHz. In grayscale mode using VersaDropT technology, the Q256/10 fires variable drops of 10 to 30 pl.
 
The Q256/30 Printhead in binary mode ejects adjustable 30 to 80 pl droplets at firing rates up to 33 kHz. In grayscale mode using VersaDropT technology, each Q256/30 nozzle can fire a stream of variable-size drops from 30 to 80 pl.
 
"With the Q-Class platform, FUJIFILM Dimatix builds on its long history of superb dot placement accuracy, excellent channel-to-channel uniformity, low cross talk and high- frequency/high-productivity drop-on demand printheads," Marc Torrey noted.
 
"Adding VersaDropT multi-pulsing technology to these new Q-Class printheads - which are already the fastest available in terms of firing frequency - allows each printhead to operate at high, medium or low resolution without impacting throughput."