It promises to launch a large-format machine, the FlatJet, based on the technology before Ipex.

At Drupa the firm was showing a technology demonstration of the printhead and samples of print on a variety of substrates including paper, board and fabric that were produced on a prototype machine. Samples had a quality that was adequate for distance viewing, which is the market the firm is targeting.

The firm licensed the fundamental technology, which uses the piezo-electric effect common to other ink-jets but in an entirely different manner, from a university in Budapest.

Eurotron managing director Lennart Jacobsson said it was only in the final weeks before the show that it had finalised the deal and it had yet to find any partners for the project. He added that the firm, which is part of Litcon, a group with computing, electronics and precision mechanics firms, would develop the core technology and fabrication of the printheads itself.

The firm claims that the technology can use water-based and that ink costs no more than conventional inks

It is a radical departure for the firm which manufactures a machine for automatically cutting index notches into catalogues. Its products are currently used by Ikea to index the catalogues at its shops and during the show Jacobsson said the firm had been visited by Argos to talk about using the machine in for a similar application in the UK.

Story by Barney Cox at Drupa