Recent Announcements Suggest That Memjet Is Ready for Prime Time — But Is It?
The problem with being skeptical — especially as openly skeptical as I am — is that you sometimes have to eat your words. I currently find myself in that situation, now that several companies have released machines featuring Memjet’s high-speed inkjet technology. While I grew increasingly skeptical about the technology’s viability after numerous announcements were made that hardware sporting a Memjet print engine were about to start shipping but never materialized, the company has made a flurry of announcements regarding new partnerships since the start of the year, and I’ve been told a variety of machines are now available. With more hardware slated for launch in the near future, the firm is beginning to quiet naysayers like me — at least as far as the technology is concerned.
Inkjet technology has been slow to gain converts in the office space, so I don’t write about it much in “The Skeptic” blog. With a few notable exceptions like Hewlett-Packard’s CM8050 and CM8060 — the so-called Edgeline digital copiers — most inkjet office devices lack the capabilities to really support business users. There is perception among consumers that inkjet is for the home and laser is for the office. Eventually, even HP was forced to pull the plug on the Edgeline devices when they failed to overcome the market’s bias toward laser. Memjet is supposed change all that. In fact, Memjet technology is supposed to upset the entire digital imaging industry and change the world as we know it.
The technology is the brainchild of Kia Silverbrook, an Australian inventor who founded Silverbrook Research in 1994 to develop Memjet heads. Based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) nanotechnology, the heads feature nozzles, heaters, and firing chambers densely packed onto a CMOS chip. Memjet heads can be ganged together in arrays that span virtually any width, enabling them to image output ranging from a snapshot to a billboard. Unlike traditional inkjet print heads, which shuttle back and forth across a page while printing, the Memjet array remains stationary and the paper passes by it when imaging to support high-speed printing. The company says the array used in an A4 device contains 70,400 nozzles and fires 900 million 1.4 picoliter ink droplets each second. The A4 Memjet device images one page per second for a bli 60-ppm top print speed and employs a 32-bit RISC controller and a 648 MHz CPU.
My initial encounter with Memjet technology came during the Photo Marketing Association’s (PMA) 2007 International Convention and Trade Show. I had the privilege of meeting Kia Silverbrook and seeing a prototype of a snapshot photo printer based on Memjet technology at the PMA show. Spitting out snapshots faster than anything I had ever witnessed, the technology was impressive. During our meeting, I was told the European photo kiosk vendor, Photo-Me International, would soon launch a device for processing digital snapshots in retail environments based on a Memjet print engine. In addition to the snapshot kiosk, the firm said that industrial printers with Memjet technology would soon be available.
Although the meeting at PMA in March 2007 was my first experience with Memjet, I soon learned that many in the industry were well aware of it. Silverbrook Research aimed to license its print engines rather than build and market hardware. I later learned that the company had been actively wooing potential licensees, including many of the leading printer OEMs. After the news broke of the machine at PMA, I spoke with representatives from several different printer companies who knew of Memjet. While they were impressed by the technology itself, many engineers I spoke with were skeptical as to whether the heads could be mass produced. They doubted the tens of thousands of nozzles in the Memjet head could be fabricated and maintained in manner that would ensure a long life without failures.
The Road To Market
After creating a buzz early in 2007, no further word came from Memjet about devices with the firm’s technology and the Photo-Me kiosk never reached the market. The next year, Memjet established four commercialization companies—Memjet Home and Office, Memjet Label, Memjet Photo Retail, and Memjet Wide Format. Memjet representatives said that rather than leading with photo kiosks, the first products would come from Memjet Home and Office. But 2008 and 2009 passed without the launch of the machine. Memjet shifted gears again, and began saying last year that its first machines would be labeling devices, and demonstrated prototypes at Drupa in Germany and shows in the United States during 2010. I’m not sure when the machines actually became available, but Memjet confirmed for me that labeling devices from several companies including Neopost USA and Astro Machine are currently shipping with Memjet technology.
Earlier this year, the company was in the headlines once again after announcing at the 2011 International Consumer Electronic Show in January that several of its licensees would market desktop office devices. While you may not have heard of some of these companies, like WeP Peripherals from India and the Taiwanese firm Kpowerscience, you’re certainly familiar with what is no doubt Memjet’s largest licensee to date, the computer giant Lenovo, which is now preparing to sell Memjet office devices in China. As part of a larger product launch in May, which included a range of laser devices, Lenevo recently demonstrated for its Chinese dealers the new RJ600N — a 60-ppm office machine featuring a print engine sourced from Memjet Home and Office. Kim Beswick, vice president of marketing for Memjet Home and Office, says the RJ600N will begin rolling out of the factory in June and should be in the channel by July.
Now that Memjet devices are out in various markets, I’ll have to stop referring to the technology as the digital imaging industry’s version of “cold fusion.” Still, the ultimate success of a Memjet office printer is far from certain. In my estimation, the RJ600N has a couple of strikes against it and the question still lingers—how well will all those nozzles perform over time?
The machine’s biggest weakness is that it features a dye-based ink set. Dye-based inks tend to smear and deteriorate when exposed to moisture. More robust pigmented inks are required for printing important business documents. A recent post at PCMag.com also indicates that the RJ600N’s printing costs are 2 cents for a black-and-white page and 6 cents for a color page. While the price of color pages is good, I think frugal office managers will be more inclined to opt for a device cheaper to run when printing black-and-white documents, which usually account for the bulk of office printing.
The final chapter is a long way from being written about Memjet. Lenovo certainly has the brand and channel to make a run at marketing the RJ600N. I haven’t seen pricing fro the machine, but if it’s near Memjet’s recommended $600 price point, the RJ600N should be able to compete toe-to-toe with the color lasers in terms of acquisition costs and print speeds. My skepticism regarding overall market acceptance lingers, however, because of the operating costs and dye-based inks. And then there’s the issue of maintaining all those nozzles.
When it come to Memjet, I’d say little healthy skepticism is still in order.
Posted by Charlie Brewer on 05/25/2011