HP PageWide Technology Powers the Fastest Large-Format Color and Monochrome Printing Portfolio on the Market

Based on reliable HP (Booth 1202) Thermal Inkjet Technology and HP pigment inks, HP PageWide Technology offers high quality at high printing speeds. This innovative technology consists of thousands of nozzles on a stationary print bar and spans the width of the page, enabling one-pass printing. It is scalable to meet a wide range of application and performance requirements and offers robust operation with economical print production.

In 2006, HP introduced a versatile 4.25-inch Thermal Inkjet printhead platform that has been used in wide writing systems in HP’s large format Latex Printers and in HP Color Inkjet Web Presses.HP Scalable Printing Technology allows this printhead to be customized to a wide range of applications including different drop weights and inks.

HP PageWide XL series Printers, which offer the fastest large-format mono and color printing and up to 50 percent savings in total production costs^, have unique operating and performance requirements that are not optimally met by HP’s 4.25-inch printhead platform. The 4.25-inch printhead delivers one or two colors of ink, and making a wide 4-color printer by stacking these printheads along and across the web of printing material requires a print zone larger than desirable for a technical graphics printer. Both the strengths and limitations of earlier generations of wide printheads provided an opportunity to develop a new HP printhead platform: the HP PageWide Printhead with a 5.08-inch (127.5 mm) print swath.

From initial conception, HP’s 5.08-inch printhead was designed to be an element of a scalable and versatile writing system that could power a wide range of high-performance HP PageWide printing solutions. Performance objectives and features for HP PageWide Printheads were driven both by the needs of HP PageWide XL Printers and extensibility to future HP PageWide printing solutions, including:

• High sustained drop rates for reliable print quality in high productivity applications;
• Reliable drop ejection to reduce print quality defects from “nozzle outs”;
• Extended time between service station cycles for sustained productivity;
• High print density in high-speed, one-pass printing for high black/color saturation at high productivity;
• Long life to reduce intervention rates and provide lower total cost of operation in high duty-cycle applications;
• Improved dot placement accuracy to meet the requirements of technical graphics;
• Stackability for a more compact 4-color print zone with the versatility to support a range of print widths;
• Compact print zone for better media control, precise color-to-color alignment, and to reduce printer size.

With these features, HP PageWide Technology achieves productivity significantly higher than can be obtained with scanning printhead systems. HP PageWide Technology in the new family of HP PageWide XL Printers is the first implementation of a third-generation HP Thermal Inkjet printing platform that will form the foundation for HP solutions—now and in the future—offering high-speed, reliable, robust, and economical printing on a wide range of media. HP PageWide Technology solutions are scalable and versatile in design and performance to meet the needs of a broad range of applications in office, commercial, and industrial printing.