Inkjet’s different images

AS TOUCHED ON THROUGHOUT THIS DOCUMENT, INKJET PRINTING TECHNOLOGIES ARE USED IN A WIDE RANGE OF APPLICATIONS INCLUDING HOME, OFFICE, LARGE FORMAT, INDUSTRIAL, THREE-DIMENSIONAL,MEDICAL, PACKAGING, TEXTILE AND OTHER SPECIALTY PRINTING SECTORS AND EVEN COMMERCIAL WEB-FED PRINT WORK.

In newly emerging areas like medical imaging and 3-D printing, significant improvement still needs to be made to the print head design and ink formulations in order to fulfil the high expectations of printer reliability and image durability demanded.

But drop-on-demand inkjet’s capacity to print vivid colour images at relatively low cost has already led to the technology’s particular dominance in both the cutsize, Small Office and Home Office (SOHO) sector and in the large-format colour printer market.

Applications in Inkjet Printing

 

Market/Application

Key Player

Current Markets

Small office/

Hewlett-Packard,

and Applications:

home office

Canon, Epson

 

Office network

Tektronix, Hewlett-Packard

 

Graphic arts

Iris, Tektronix, Epson

 

Industrial/postal

VideoJet, Marsh, Image,

 

marking

Willet

 

Large format

ColorSpan, Encad, Hewlett-

 

 

Packard, Mimaki, Epson

Emerging Markets Home photo

Hewlett-Packard, Epson,

and Applications:

 

Canon

 

Multifunction

Hewlett-Packard, Canon

 

Digital color press

Scitex, ACS, Tektronix

 

Grand format

Idanit, Vutek, Nur,

 

 

ColorSpan, Mutoh

 

Textile

Canon, Seiren, Stork, Toxot

 

Medical imaging

Iris, Sterling Diagnostic

 

3-D printing

3D System, Z Corporation

Cut to Size

In the office network colour printer market, the battle between colour laser and colour inkjet printing technologies is still ongoing: the delicate balance between print speed, image quality, image durability, purchase price and operation cost all key factors.

The facts are that:

•by end 2002, over 50% of the SOHO printer market is expected to have turned to colour - this statistic includes both laser and inkjet printer options, with the latter steadily gaining dominant market share;

•there is a continued decentralisation of office printing away from the photocopier towards personal ‘desktop’ printers;

•high quality colour documents such as proposals and presentations, previously outsourced to printers and copy shops, are being printed more and more in- house;

•the growing range of digital cameras and desktop scanners has seen widescale escalation of desktop printing of images.

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