Xaar celebrated the 20th year of existence of its ever-popular Xaar 128 printhead. In the past, the printhead was conceptualised for use in desktop fax machines, however, later the Xaar 128 proved to be a better fit to other sectors due to its combination of reliability, ease of integration, speed and quality of the print. This eventually turned it to quickly become a firm favourite in the coding and marking as well as wide-format graphics markets.
Xaar 128 was launched in 1999 and was the impetus behind the first industrial inkjet revolution in wide-format graphics. Its compact footprint and light carriage weight of only 16 grams, combined with its simple electronic interface, enables quick and easy integration into printers by OEMs.
Whether printing outdoor or indoor graphics, barcodes, outer case carton coders or poster printing, the Xaar 128 and its compatibility with many ink types positioned it as the leading 17 mm piezoelectric drop-on-demand printhead.
This has been maintained over the last 20 years and later evolved into new applications. With its ability to handle the printing of fluids with a range of viscosity, reactivity and conductivity the Xaar 128 is also now proving perfect for certain uses in the latest Advanced Manufacturing and 3D market sectors.
With over 1.5 million Xaar 128 printheads in the market, the success of the Xaar 128 was officially celebrated with the cutting of a ‘birthday’ cake at Xaar’s factory in Huntingdon, UK, where the Xaar 128 is manufactured.
