HP declares war with new printing technology

Krishna Kumar

BEIJING: Hewlett-Packard has introduced a new printing technology claimed to be scalable across the complete spectrum of printing needs while producing fast and cheap color prints.

Based on inkjet printing, the new technology, named Edgeline, keeps the printhead static and moves only the paper. The printhead covers the entire width of the paper and hence the printing gets done in one pass.

HP chose to introduce this new technology in a segment where it is not one of the leaders. The CM8060 plays in the $24b departmental printer segment. This segment is a fiercely competitive one, with Canon, Xerox, Ricoh and Konica-Minolta being the leaders, each separated by a few percentage points.

This market is laser based and follows the rules originally set for the copier market. HP’s intention to declare war in this segment was more than made obvious by the war costumes worn by its executives at the launch. Also the pay per use services model that HP is using in this segment is more in tune with the current play here.

The Edgeline printhead is made up of individual units of four and a quarter inches in length, each having 10560 nozzles. Multiple such units can be used together to cover the width of the paper.

According to Gary Cutler, vice president and general manager, Edgeline Technologies, Imaging and Printing Group, HP, there were two major impediments to ink based printing that have been resolved with the new Edgeline technology. “We have toiled with this idea for about 20 years. Paper does not like the extremes of wetness and heat that occurs while printing at high ppms. In order to overcome this, we invented a new bonding agent that fuses the ink to the paper. Reliability of the printhead was the other issue. The average Edgeline printhead will outlast the printer itself. This reliability comes from the simplicity of the design. There are enough redundant nozzles provided to make up for any that may become weak or non-operative during the life of the printer.”

The unprecedented level of control over the printing has helped debut two new features in edgeline printers: Office color and Color Accent. Office color is a bit like draft printing in as much as the intensity of the colored portions is reduced. But the intensity of black print is retained at the original level. In this way, the readability of documents is maintained, while reducing the cost of printing. Color Accent is adding a dash of full color, like a logo, to an otherwise monochrome document at the cost of a monochrome print.

HP has chosen to debut the technology at the highest end. The CM8060 and CM8050 MFDs are the first to have Edgeline technology.

The HP CM8060 Color MFP claims an average of 60 ppm black and white and 50 ppm color on plain paper and the CM8050 claims ppm black and white and 40 ppm color. These printers are not available under standard purchase, but under a lease or services model, where you pay according the volume of printing you do.