The Aspen Print Engine has the same 220mm print width and 1,600dpi native resolution as its predecessor, but can print at up to 225 feet per minute (fpm) versus the Production Class's 160fpm maximum.

Whilst this is some way short of the 800-1,000fpm speed of high-end digital inkjet web presses from the likes of HP and Kodak, Memjet Labels vice president of engineering Tom Roetker said it was viable for the commercial market.

"The target to get to to really be viable is 300fpm so we’re working towards that and this gets us quite a bit closer to that number," said Roetker. "We have several OEMs now that are working on product launches on the commercial (printing) side.

"We’ve changed the electronics architecture and the software to go with it to allow us to continue to increase our speed – we’re not shooting for 1,000fpm but we’re looking to improve our speed so we can go for those customers that can’t afford the $1-2m press but can afford the under-$500k press.

"There’s a lot of customers that could use this kind of product both in label printing and commercial printing that have applications but may not have 1,000fpm demand at the moment. This allows them to get in at a price point and convert to some digital technology when they have a decent amount of demand but not up to the high volumes that these other presses do."

Roetker cited applications such as transactional printing, booklets, brochures and newsletters with short-runs and a high amount of variable content. "It's going to allow variable data that you can’t get with flexo machines or offset and they can compete with cost-per-page on the other digital machines but at a lower entry price," he said.

Roetker said Memjet's cost-per-page based on its ink and printhead costs would be "competitive" with other digital machines, despite its printheads having a relatively short head life of around seven litres.

"Our head is a disposable head and is not going to last the length of those piezo heads that last for a long time [but] ours are inexpensive by comparison. We factor the head replacement cost into the cost-per-page," he said.

"I think we’ll be competitive or below where the [other] digital people are; we’re not going to be down to offset on an ink cost/page but I think it’s going to be in a competitive range which in general from what I’ve seen is from $0.01-0.03 per page."

The Aspen can be mounted as a standalone printer, or two engines can be mounted side-by-side to print a 17" (432mm) wide web; there is also the possibility of using four engines for duplex or double web printing.

Memjet currently has two existing OEM partners and four brand new ones working on Aspen-powered products that are due to be announced later this year. Roetker was unable to comment on the identity of any of the partners or the specifics of their products, although he did confirm that one partner had "a lot of finishing expertise".

He added that the Aspen could be mounted on a single station on a flexo or offset press, but said that the sales channel for any such product would still be through the OEM route rather than Memjet doing the integration itself.

Memjet has also completely overhauled the electronic and software components of the print engine to enable more precise dot placement and screening techniques to be used, leading to improved image quality.

"The RIPs can now do more manipulating of the image to improve quality and the printer will take variable data at full print speed, unrestricted, so that gives a lot more control to the user over what shows up on page," said Roetker.

"We’ve scrutinized every single manipulation of information and figured out how to make it more efficient – so we redesigned all the algorithms and we also put it on a FPGA chip, which are more flexible in terms of allowing you to change it in future if you find something else you want to change.

"It allows better techniques for improving the quality of the image; there’s more access to more advanced FM halftone techniques rather than AM. We can do all sorts of new manipulations there to allow more smooth gradients, hide digital imperfections – any streaking or banding that might exist – it gives a lot more power to IQ management."