Ricoh Company has announced its development of a new inkjet printhead for industrial applications using its thin film (PZT) piezo actuator, a kind of piezoelectric transducers that creates mechanical deformation by the application of a voltage, used for jetting ink drops.
This new head is driven by the high-stiffness actuator manufactured using Ricoh’s unique Sol-Gel process, a method for producing solid material from the solution of raw materials. This enables the application of high quality multi-drop control, a technology used for shading expression, making dot sizes variable by merging ink drops in flight, as featured in the Ricoh GH printhead series. The highly integrated design utilizes Ricoh’s MEMS technology (Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems: a general term for miniaturized electro-mechanical devices or technology) to realize 600dpi resolution with 1,280 nozzles configured in 4 x 300dpi rows. Additionally, the ink paths are isolated, enabling a single head to jet up to four ink colors.
Ricoh has a long heritage in the world of inkjet technology dating back over 30 years, which enables it to bring a wide variety of inkjet printing systems to market, whilst also supporting partners in diverse industrial and specialty markets from wide format graphics to 3D printing and from textile to digital enhancements and many more.
Ricoh will introduce the new printhead through its own its inkjet printers also promoting the adoption of this thin film PZT and MEMS technology to a wider range of industrial partners in order to meet increasing market demands.
