The Hindu Business Line : Inside an inkjet factory

Clockwise from top left: 1. The final products…but behind the packaging lies a complex process; 2. The manufacture of integrated print head cartridges is almost fully automated while separate ink well types still use some manual stages; 3. Every cartridge of the separate inkwell type is inspected visually; 4. Almost over! Batches of ink cartridge heads are mated with plastic parts; 5. A test strip simulates the performance of every cartridge under various user modes before it is cleared for despatch.

Anand Parthasarathy

Of the technology that goes into an inkjet printer, over 70 per cent lies in the ink cartridge… it is no longer just a receptacle storing the ink. While the high-end corporate and production printers still use separate ink wells, the bulk of the consumer inkjets tend to integrate the print head with the ink wells.

The inkjet manufacturing unit of the world’s biggest printer manufacturer, Hewlett Packard in Singapore, accounts for 80 per cent of the cartridges that bear the HP stamp and gradually, since 1989, has escalated its output to today’s 100 million per quarter, that is about a million units a day.

It is HP’s most vertically integrated factory and interestingly ink cartridges are now about the only printer products that the company manufactures directly — every thing else is contracted out. Why? Because the cartridge remains the most critical component, one on which the reputation of the company rides.

While integrated print cartridge manufacture is almost totally automated, the plant that turns out the separate ink well types still sees human intervention in many operations.

In one respect, both lines are identical as this correspondent saw during a recent sponsored visit to the facility: every single unit is inspected and tested prior to dispatch. This might add some crucial minutes to the production cycle, but it is one way (the only way, say insiders) that HP ensures 100 per cent working of its products. In the case of the separate ink well type, this involves visual inspection of the print head under a microscope.

The Singapore unit, which employs 3,200, also manufactures ink for the large format Indigo industrial printers.