Press Centre

Impika, a specialist in high-performance printing and material jetting using inkjet technology, and Xaar, a worldwide leader in piezoelectric inkjet printhead technology, are delighted to announce a new greyscale printing solution – the IPS C-9000.

The IPS C-9000 is targeted at personalization system manufacturers servicing the plastic card and security document industries, and addresses the growing demands on these industries to produce high-quality results to ensure maximum authenticity. The IPS C-9000 has been designed by Impika and integrates Xaar Leopard printheads, which incorporate Xaar’s unique greyscale technology.

The Xaar Leopard offers near-photographic print results, and is therefore ideally suited for use in the production of high-quality personalized plastic cards and fiduciary items such as security documents, passports, ID cards, access control cards, and loyalty cards.

The IPS C-9000 is a simple, compact, single-pass print process, producing results of 900-dpi. It uses UV curable inks, and is able to print fixed or variable data, with the capability to print in excess of 3,000 cards an hour. It is compatible with various substrates including ABC, PVC, polycarbonate, paper, and cardboard.

Xaar greyscale technology entails the firing of multiple droplets from the same nozzle in rapid succession, which merge to form pixels of variable size, promoting enhanced resolution. Due to the higher apparent resolution achieved with fewer pixels, the Leopard also offers significantly increased speed in comparison with binary printing.

“We need to provide our customers with a solution that not only produces exceptional quality print results, but is also cost-effecitve and speedy. The Xaar Leopard is unique in enabling us to do just that.”

Paul Morgavi, Impika’s CEO, continues: “We believe that the IPS C-9000 is the first in the next generation of printing solutions for our industry, offering a quality that is un-surpassed and is so crucial to those in the ID and security markets.”

“We are delighted to collaborate with Impika in the development of the IPS C-9000, one of the first industrial application of our Leopard printhead. The IPS C-9000 is not only a further example of the versatility of inkjet, but it demonstrates the value of greyscale technology in printing variable data at high-speed with photo-quality results,” Zoë Nevill, European Account Manager for Xaar, commented.

A demonstration of the IPS C-9000 functionalities will be given at CARTES 2004, at IMPIKA’s stand No. 3C57 (November 2, 3 & 4, 2004) Parc des Expositions Paris-Nord Villepinte – FRANCE.

About IMPIKA:
Created in March 2003, IMPIKA is headquartered at Aubagne in the south of France. Located near Gemplus, from which IMPIKA’s incorporators come, it offers high-performance industrial printing and material jetting solutions using inkjet technology.

About ten persons have joined the company since the beginning of the year; IMPIKA has currently 23 employees.

IMPIKA designs, develops, implements and markets hardware and software solutions, as well as the required engineering as regards ink and material jetting, for industrial applications including digital printing, microelectronics and biotechnologies.

Tel: +33 (0)4 42 62 43 00
Fax: +33 (0)4 42 62 42 99
http://www.impika.com

Press contact:
Flavie GIL 06 61 10 03 21 – flavie.gil@wanadoo.fr

About XAAR:
Xaar plc is a market-leading ink jet technology company. It targets the world’s office, commercial and industrial printing markets.

The office printing market is approached through Xaar’s licensees; the industrial printing market is targeted by XaarJet, the manufacturing arm of Xaar; and a combination of partners and key players work with Xaar to serve the commercial printing market. Vivid Print Innovations, the Customer Support Division of Xaar, provides Xaar’s in-house specialist integration service.

For more information, please contact:

Jenny Cattier
Xaar plc
Science Park
Cambridge, CB4 0XR
T: +44 (0) 1223 423663
E: jcattier@xaar.co.uk
W: www.xaar.co.uk

Laura French/ Paul Spiers
AD Communications
The Old Post House,
81 The High Street
Esher, Surrey, KT10 9QA
T: +44 (0) 1372 464470
E: lfrench@adcomms.co.uk
E: pspiers@adcomms.co.uk
W: www.adcomms.co.uk 

For more information, please contact:

Alex Challinor, Xaar plc
T: +44 (0)1223 423663
achallinor@xaar.co.uk
www.xaar.co.uk

Laura French
T: +44 (0)1372 464470
lfrench@adcomms.co.uk