Xaar has celebrated the performance of its 5601 printhead with a special event for over 300 of its UK staff. Based on the company’s silicon MEMS thin film platform, the 5601 is the culmination of over eight years of research and development and has created a foundation for Xaar’s thin film printheads of the future.
‘We are immensely proud of what has been achieved in terms of delivering a completely new technology platform, which we expect to deliver a step-change in inkjet printing,’ commented CEO Doug Edwards. ‘Today was about recognising this and reinforcing how each person had a role to play. It is a fantastic achievement by everyone at Xaar and demonstrates our leadership in inkjet technology.’
‘Understanding customer and market requirements was key to the development of the Xaar 5601,’ explained Ramon Borrell, chief technology officer. ‘We wanted to create a new platform with capabilities that we didn’t have at the time. Specifically, we wanted to develop an aqueous printhead, with higher resolution, higher printing speed and higher print quality. This meant we needed to start our development with a blank piece of paper; designing every part from the ground up and not being limited by the previous technologies.’
The printhead has over 5600 active nozzles, is capable of jetting up to nine litres of fluid per hour at a frequency in excess of 100 kHz and incorporates Xaar’s TF Technology to maximise production uptime, print quality and printhead lifetime.
‘Critical to success was the time and effort we put into visiting customers throughout the development programme to ensure we captured and delivered solutions to the key OEM and end user pain points,’ explained product line manager, Jason Remnant. ‘The Xaar 5601 is the culmination of all the R&D teams’ hard work on the new technology platform. We’ve invested in a platform that will produce not just one printhead, but a family of printheads and we wanted to recognise the hard work that has gone into the programme.’
