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Whether Xerox’s gel ink announcement at Drupa was a curve ball aimed squarely at competitors exhibits promising tomorrow’s inkjet technology or not, it certainly opened up the inkjet technology debate.

For a company that said it wanted to focus the market’s mind on how toner technology can translate into profits today, it did a great job of providing compelling arguments in favour of its vision for inkjet for tomorrow. An intriguing development.

Xerox says its technology is definitely a when and not an if, even if it won’t say when. Steven Hoover, vice president and director of the Xerox Research Centre, talked about the inkjet paradox and the complex and contrasting demands placed on inks in printheads and on paper. Xerox’s solution of using an ink that is thick or even solid at room temperature and heating it up to make it runny enough to work in a printhead isn’t a unique offering: Océ employs a similar technique in its CrystalPoint technology. And what Xerox calls gel ink, others call paste ink, which is already used in some industrial applications. But Xerox is the first
company to make such a noise in public about the technology’s potential.

The company says gel ink is ideal for its push into packaging, explaining how it can work on porous, metallic and plastic substrates, but with a test rig in the lab that’s running at 122m per minute and is 508mm wide – with the possibility to go wider and faster – it could form the basis of commercial print products too.

Format: Web
Size: 508mm
Colours: CMYK, specials possible
Speed: 122m per minute
Technology: Piezo drop-on-demand
Shipping: TBC
Price: TBC