Close-up of a Memjet Waterfall printhead

Memjet aims to increase the life of its high-speed Waterfall inkjet print heads in order to take advantage of "huge" opportunities in the commercial print market.

Speaking at the UK launch of the Lomond EvoJet 2, billed as "the world's fastest office printing technology", Memjet Office president Bill McGlynn said: "We are working on getting the life of the printheads up so we can put them into large commercial presses. We have a lot of gaps in commercial print that we'd like to fill."

McGlynn described the new Delphax Elan 500, which uses Memjet heads, as "very cool", and said Memjet would also be looking at other applications for its technology, including imprinting.

"In a couple of years we'll have pigment inks and a longer head life. That will give us more gamut and durability, so that door will open for us nicely," he said. "Once our customers experience how simple it is to print really fast, they never go back."

Memjet also has ambitions in the area of nano printing technology for functional printing. "We are excited about splitting nano particles in the future. Our heads could be used for all sorts of other things, for example 'printed' lithium batteries," stated McGlynn.

"A number of applications are becoming possible because of nano particles that are as interesting to us as printing, but printing is interesting to us now," he added.

McGlynn formerly worked at HP and was involved in HP's acquisition of Indigo from Benny Landa in 2001. Speaking of Landa's new Nanography printing venture he quipped: "We would love for our printheads to be in Benny Landa's presses and believe that could be more economically attractive!"

At the launch event Memjet also showed the high-speed wide-format WideStar printer, manufactured by Own-X.

The 106.7cm wide device can print at 30cm/sec at 1,600x800dpi, or 15cm/sec at 1,600x1,600dpi. It prints onto plain, matt, and glossy inkjet papers and is aimed at technical drawing and graphics applications. It is driven by a Caldera RIP.

Own-X technical director Jack Armstrong said the company was looking for potential UK resellers for the device, which has a list price of €79,000 (￡64,000).

For its push into the office printing market Memjet has opted for an all-inclusive colour printing pricing model that involves a flat monthly leasing fee of between ￡49-￡149, to include the cost of the printer, ink, and service.