Today, when a print cartridge runs dry, consumers just buy more ink, not an entire new print head.
Engineers also developed a new engine and increased the size of the print head to help increase print speeds.
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Think of an inkjet printer with a print head that rises and continually prints on top of the last image it printed.
That means the print head can move faster across a page, as well as turn out documents with more colors and higher image quality.
The new manufacturing process allows HP to fit 3, 900 or more microscopic ink nozzles on a single print head, compared to 1, 266 nozzles on past designs.
The new inkjet platform, which will initially be geared toward the high end of the market, will incorporate the print head in the printer itself rather than in the ink cartridge.
Obviously an eyelid-like shutter mechanism would be too large and complicated for something as small as a print head, so an electrical field is applied instead to keep the film spread thin.
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The various pieces would then be lined up and laminated together to form a working print head, a process which required HP to have two different manufacturing lines and product designs for low-end and high-end print heads.
That type of design uses three parallel arms to control the print head, enabling a device that's not only "fun to watch, " according to the group, but that can also quickly print high resolution objects with a large 9-inch by 11-inch build envelope.
The research team uses a RepRap 3D printer and a custom extruder head to print a filament network composed of sucrose, glucose and dextran which is later encased in a bio-gel containing living cells.
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An American firm, 3D Systems, used one of its 3D printers to print a hammer for your correspondent, complete with a natty wood-effect handle and a metallised head.
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