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Brother Industries to Release 'World's Smallest' A3 Multifunction Printer
9/5/2008 |
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Brother Industries Ltd will release eight new color inkjet printers (eight for home use and two for commercial use) from October 2008.
The commercial models include an A3 printer. It features "the world's smallest" outer dimensions and is suitable for shops, offices and home offices with limited space, according to the company.
The "world smallest" A3 printer is the "MFC-6490CN" of the "Justio" series. The company says it is the "world's smallest" of the copy machines that functions as an A3 printer (output), A3 copier (readout, output), A3 fax (transmission, reception) and A3 scanner (readout). Its dimensions are 540 (W) x 488 (D) x 323mm (H). The expected street price is about ¥55,000 (approx US$507).
The copy machine was downsized by adopting the the "tube engine method," in which the ink cartridge is separated from the print head. In other manufacturers' products, the ink cartridge is assembled directly to the print head; therefore, the print head and the ink cartridge move as a unit.
In the tube engine method, the ink cartridge is connected to the print head via an ink supply tube so that the ink cartridge is fixed and only the print head (and the tube, to be exact) moves. The tube engine method, in which the ink cartridge does not move, opened the way for miniaturization (height in particular), according to the company.
Brother Industries already adopted the tube engine method in the "MyMio" series intended for home use, but it developed a new tube engine for commercial products.
The tube engine for commercial products has features that the household engine does not have. An ordinary head has one line each for CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key=black). However, the head for commercial products has two lines for black, which improves the output speed, because commercial products require higher monochrome output performance.
Meanwhile, the new tube engine for home products was developed with an emphasis on output quality. Specifically, variations in thickness and the area of each dot were reduced by limiting the ink droplets to three sizes (1.5pL minimum) so as to allow more uniform discharging of droplets in each size.
In addition, the color representation range of its four-color cartridge is more like that of a six-color ink cartridge because it adopted newly developed "color matching technology," the company said.
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