Hitotsubashi University
Institute of Innovation Research

Seiko Epson Corporation
Development of an Inkjet Printer that Produces
High-Resolution Text and Images

Yaichi Aoshima
Makoto Kitamura

IIR Case Study CASE#12-07

2012年7月6日

一橋大学イノベーション研究センター
東京都国立市中2-1
http://www.iir.hit-u.ac.jp
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Hitotsubashi University 21st Century COE Program
Dynamics of Knowledge, Corporate Systems and Innovation
Research Project on Okochi Prize Cases

Seiko Epson Corporation
Development of an Inkjet Printer that Produces High-Resolution Text and Images
Yaichi Aoshima
Makoto Kitamura
May 2008(Translated in July 2012)

This case study is the result of research undertaken for the Research Project on Okochi Prize Cases,
which is being conducted with financial support from the Dynamics of Knowledge, Corporate Systems
and Innovation project under the 21st Century COE Program at Hitotsubashi University. The project
prepares case studies of research efforts that have been awarded the Okochi Prize that provide
overviews of technical innovations and analyze the development process, the details and results ofcommercialization and related topics, in cooperation with the Okochi Memorial Foundation and firms thathave received the award. Together with creating a portfolio of case studies and accumulating case dataon Japan’s major innovations, the project performs cross-comparative analyses of cases and seeks to
identify the characteristics and issues surrounding innovation efforts at Japanese firms (for details refer tothe following website (Japanese only): http://www.iir.hit-u.ac.jp/reserch/21COE.html). The authors would
like to express their deep appreciation for the extensive support and cooperation provided by the Okochi
Memorial Foundation while pursuing this project.
Note: The copyright for this case study belongs to the authors or the Hitotsubashi University Institute of
Innovation Research. Reprinting or copying any of the information contained in this case study for
purposes other than personal use requires the prior written consent of the Hitotsubashi University
Institute of Innovation Research. For more information please contact the following office.
Inquiries: Hitotsubashi University Institute of Innovation Research, Research Support Office
TEL: 042-580-8423

e-mail:chosa@iir.hit-u.ac.jp

2

21st Century COE Program
Dynamics of Knowledge, Corporate Systems and Innovation
Research Project on Okochi Prize Cases

Seiko Epson Corporation
Development of an Inkjet Printer that Produces High-Resolution Text and Images
May 2008
Yaichi Aoshima, Associate Professor of Hitotsubashi University Institute of Innovation Research*
Makoto Kitamura, Assistant Professor, Tokyo Keizai University Faculty of Business Administration* 2-1 Naka, Kunitachi, Tokyo 186-8603
Phone: 042-580-8424

Fax: 042-580-8410

Email: aoshima@iir.hit-u.ac.jp
http://www.iir.hit-u.ac.jp/

This case study was prepared as part of the “Research Project on Okochi Prize Cases,” one of theresearch projects on the Dynamics of Knowledge, Corporate Systems and Innovation under the 21stCentury COE Program at Hitotsubashi University.
Preparation of this case study would not have been possible without the extensive cooperation of thefollowing individuals, who were unstinting in their support through presentations, interviews on two
separate occasions, the coordination of materials and invaluable suggestions during the writing andediting of the final manuscript. The authors would like to express their sincere appreciation for thisassistance.
Seiko Epson Corporation
Seiji Hanaoka, Representative Director and President
Minoru Usui, Executive Director, General Administrative Manager, Corporate Research &Development Division, and General Administrative Manager, Production Engineering &Development Division
Akio Owatari, Senior General Manager, CS/Quality Assurance, Environment Center, Imaging
and Information Operations Division
Kamihito Takeuchi, Manager, Corporate Business Planning & Management Division3

1. Introduction
The printer business at Seiko Epson (Epson)1 was launched with the selection of the company’s
Printing Timer for official timekeeping at the Tokyo Olympics. This company introduced the world’s firstmini-printer in 1968, and throughout the 1970s built its business base with mini-printers for calculators.
Following the introduction of the serial impact dot matrix printer (the SIDM printer) in 1979, Epson’sbusiness maintained a growth track. As businesses entered the 1980s, personal computers began tospread rapidly within the office environment. During the early stages of personal computer proliferation,
the SIDM printer was widely installed in offices as the leading output device. Hand in hand with the officepenetration of PCs, Epson’s printer business also expanded rapidly. In 1984, Epson surpassed NEC
Corporation to attain the world’s highest share of the SIDM printer market, and both figuratively andliterally the printer business became the primary business driving Epson’s growth.
From about the mid-1980s, however, these circumstances began to change. Personal computers
spread to homes, and demand for personal printers grew. In response to this change, Hewlett-Packard(HP) in the U.S. and Canon Inc. commercialized bubble jet-type2 inkjet printers (IJ printers) that ejected
ink using bubbles produced inside the ink chamber. These bubble jet IJ printers began to gain popularity
in the personal printer market as an alternative to the SIDM printer. Although Epson also introduced an IJ
printer that used the piezo method, the company lacked the cost competitiveness to respond to theneeds of the personal printer market.
Furthermore, in the high-price market for businesses, printers utilizing methods other than IJ, such as
electrophotographic methods, were being placed on the market. The laser beam printers made by
Canon were especially well received by the market. Epson, however, did not achieve success withelectrophotographic printer commercialization.
Thus Epson’s printer business built around the SIDM printer was confronted with a serious crisis as itcame under attack by laser printers from above and IJ printers from below. If Epson maintained its
current course, a broad-scale contraction of its business would be unavoidable.
Consequently, toward the end of the 1980s Epson was compelled to focus on personal printers as atarget market, and undertook a company-wide effort to improve its piezo IJ technology. Development of anew print head that would achieve lower costs and miniaturization, and enable Epson to support the shift
to color printers, was the overriding imperative for this effort. As a result, Epson successfully developed a
new print head capable of propelling small-volume ink droplets straight from the print head with only a tiny
amount of voltage, despite a size just 1/10 the size of conventional print heads. This was called the
MACH print head.
The first IJ printer to use the MACH head was the MJ-500, which was introduced to the Japanesemarket in 1993. The next product was the MJ-700V2C, which achieved a resolution of 720dpi withspecial paper and was introduced in 1994. This was an epoch-making product, with double the resolution
at half the price compared with other companies’ models, and secured an overwhelming market shareworldwide. The MACH head evolved even further, and with the 1996 introduction of the PM-700C, which
1

The forerunners of Seiko Epson were Suwa Seikosha Co., Ltd. and its subsidiary Shinshu Seiki Co., Ltd. Seiko Epson
was born through a merger of the two companies in 1985. In this case study, the company and its activities prior to themerger are also uniformly referred to by the name “Epson” except when Suwa Seikosha or Shinshu Seiki in particular isindicated.
2
The term “bubble jet” is the term used by Canon, while HP calls the same method a “thermal jet method.” In the following
pages, both the bubble jet method and the thermal jet method will be uniformly referred to using the term “bubble jet method”
except when directly indicating HP printers.

4

achieved the transition to ultra-high-density full-color printing dubbed as “photograph image quality,” color
IJ printers became synonymous with Epson. In 1997, Epson finally pulled ahead of Canon to regain theleading share of the Japanese market.
Thus the IJ printer business came to be the backbone business supporting Epson. More recently,
however, price competition in the home printer market has intensified, and stable earnings into the future
are by no means guaranteed. As prices for printers themselves continue to shrink, Epson has maintained
its business model of ensuring earnings from consumables such as inks and recording media, but
companies that have put compatible inks on the market are also active, and in overseas markets such as
China in particular, establishing a business model centered on consumables has proven difficult.
Growth in the market for multifunctional devices (Multi Function Printer: MFP), which offer not just thesingle function of a printer but also a copy function and scanner function, has also been remarkable.
Office equipment manufacturers with copiers and faxes are dominant in this MFP market.
Consequently, what is being expected at Epson is the application of IJ technology to the businessmarket. Epson’s ink-jet technology expels liquid by means of the physical deformation of the piezoelectricelement. This can support the use of various liquids because, unlike a bubble jet print head that causes
ink to vaporize, a load is never placed directly on the expelled liquid. Therefore Epson is attempting toapply IJ technology to various uses other than printers for home use.
In the segment for markings using expelled ink, IJ printers are making inroads for printing on cloth,rather than paper, as a medium for the ink. For applications such as printing of large-scale posters foradvertising, Epson also provides OEM supply to other companies as an ink and print head package. In
non-marking sectors that require ejecting liquids other than ink, IJ technology is being applied in liquid
crystal display (LCD) panel manufacturing. For expelling liquids, IJ technology achieves highgeneral-purpose functionality. For Epson’s growth, identifying sectors in which this technology will beapplied in the future is a critical strategic issue.

2. Overview of IJ Technology
The IJ technology mechanism is extremely simple: the image formation process is completed simply
by ejecting ink through nozzles and onto a recording medium such as paper. Methods to eject ink arebroadly divided into two types, referred to as the piezo method, which uses physical energy, and the
bubble jet method (called the thermal jet method at HP), which uses thermal energy (see Figure 1).
The name “piezo method” originates from the fact a “piezoelectric element” – a ceramic piezoelectricmaterial that expands and contracts when an electric charge is applied – is used to expel the ink. The
operating principle involves the piezoelectric element, which is bonded to the external wall of ink
chambers called “cavities” and causes the cavities to expand and contract, with the resulting force used
to expel the ink.
In contrast to this technology, the bubble jet operating principle involves heating the ink with a heater,
causing the ink to boil. This creates bubbles, and the pressure from the bubbles expels the ink. Canon’s
researchers stumbled onto the bubble jet mechanism in 1975 after seeing ink ejected when a soldering
iron accidentally made contact with the ink-filled syringe of an injection device3.
Compared with the bubble jet method, the piezo method is superior in terms of ink ejection control, ink
3

Taken from Canon Inc.’s website.

5selection possibilities and print head durability. First, the ink droplet volume can be adjusted freely
because droplets are controlled by physically varying the amount of voltage applied to the piezoelectricelement. Second, unlike the bubble method there are few restrictions on the nature of the inks that canbe used, and inks can be selected according to the use, because a load is not placed on the ink itself.
Third, the print head is highly durable, because the piezoelectric element can be used semi-permanently,
and the running cost is lower as a result.
Figure 1: Piezo method and bubble jet method(Piezo method: MLP)

Multi-layer piezoelectricelement (MLP)

Expansion andcontraction (verticaldirection)

CavityInk(Piezo method: ML Chips)
Expansion andcontraction(horizontal direction)

Piezoelectricelement

CavityInk(Bubble jet/thermal jet method)
Heater
BubbleCavityInk

Source: Prepared by the authors with reference to the November 22, 2003 issue of Nikkei Byte

6

Two drawbacks to the piezo method, on the other hand, are high cost and the difficulty ofminiaturization because it is not well suited to mass production. The high cost to process the piezoelectricelements and the glass that constitutes the print head, keep the price of the finished product high.
Moreover, because the magnitude of displacement of the piezoelectric element is small and the size ofthe element is comparatively large, the difficulty of achieving a high-density nozzle arrangement is also a
problem. Because the cavities depend on the size of the piezoelectric element, there is a natural limit tominiaturization of the print head and therefore ultimately to miniaturization of the printer itself.
With the bubble jet method, on the other hand, a high-density nozzle arrangement is possible
because the piezoelectric elements are not needed. Mass production and miniaturization were alsoeasier, because the printing elements are manufactured using semiconductor fabrication processes. The
short head lifetime, however, was a definite problem. These advantages and disadvantages of the piezo
method and bubble jet method are compared in Table 1.

Table 1: Comparison of the piezo method and bubble jet method
Piezo method

Bubble jet method

Mass production (cost)×△

Durability◎

×Ejection performance○○

Increased density

×◎

Ink selectivity◎○

Source: Epson reference materials

Of these two methods, the one developed by Epson from the mid-1970s was the piezo method. Likecopiers, printers originally were office equipment that required maintenance, and for office equipment
durability is essential. What initially gave the company’s printers a giant leap forward was thedevelopment of a small, highly durable miniprinter, which Epson created when the Epson group wasselected to serve as the official timekeeper of the Tokyo Olympics. Thus the fact Epson selected thepiezo method with its superb durability might be said to have been natural, despite the complexity of theconfiguration.

3. Process of IJ Technology Development at Epson
3.1 Progress in impact printers
Epson has been at the center of each respective chapter in the printer business, beginning withminiprinters in the 1970s, SIDM printers in the 1980s, and IJ printers since the 1990s (See Table 2 andinformation on the types of printers and printing methods in Appendix I at the end of this manuscript).
Epson’s printer business got its start with the EP-101 miniprinter put on the market in September 1968
by Suwa Seikosha, one of the current company’s forerunners. The miniprinter was designed for
calculators and ECR, and printed figures and characters by stamping them out. Shinshu Seiki Co., Ltd., a7

subsidiary of Suwa Seikosha at that time, was responsible for the printer’s mass production. Shinshu
Seiki was later put in charge of the printer business and liquid crystal business, and Suwa Seikoshaproceeded to diversify into the watch business, semiconductor business, crystal business and optics
business. Shinshu Seiki created the “EPSON” brand in 1975. The brand name was formed by combining
the initials for Electronic Printer (EP) and the word “son,” meaning the future products to which the newprinter would give birth. In 1982 Shinshu Seiki changed its name to Epson, and in 1985, Epson mergedwith Suwa Seikosha and the new entity was renamed Seiko Epson.
Research and development on printers for personal computers was begun in 1975, the same year inwhich the EPSON brand was launched. Epson chose the dot impact method, which breaks characters
into dots that are printed by means of wire pins striking a printer ribbon according to a combination of dots.
For the dot impact method, Epson adopted the SIDM method to sequentially print each character.
With the dot impact method, print quality is affected by the number of wire pins. The TP-80, the first
product put on the market in 1979, had seven pins, and was followed by the launch of the nine-pin MP-80
in 1980. Epson then continued to increase the number of pins, and introduced the 24-pin UP-130K in
1983 and the 48-pin VP-4800 in 1988. Sales of SIDM method printers rose throughout the 1980s,
growing in lockstep with the spread of personal computers, and in 1984 EPSON traded positions with
NEC Corporation to become the leader in terms of worldwide share of SIDM method printers shipped, aposition Epson has maintained to this day as the top domestic manufacturer.
In the latter half of the 1970s, however, printer manufacturers began developing printers that used
non-impact methods as an alternative to the impact method in products such as miniprinters and SIDM
printers. This was a period when various methods were developed, only to be quickly replaced. Epson’spredecessor Shinshu Seiki also began the development of IJ technology during the second half of the
1970s. Moreover, at Shinshu Seiki this development was carried out in parallel with the development ofother non-impact methods, including the electrothermal transfer printing method (video printer), thecycolor printing method (color copiers), and electrophotographic printing method.

8

Table 2: Summary of Epson’s printer business
Impact printers
MiniprinterNon-impact printer
SIDM printers

IJ printers

Other products

1968: Suwa Seikosha
introduces its first product,
the EP-101
1975: EPSON brand

1975: Begins R&D

About 1975: Suwa Seikosha

Begins R&D on products such

established

1979: Introduces its first

begins R&D

as thermal transfer methods

product, the TP-80

About 1978: Begins joint

and electrophotographic

development with Shinshu

methods from about thisSeiki. Introduces technology

period.

1960s1970s

from U.S. corporation Kaiser

1980s

1980: Introduces the

1984: Introduces its first

1986: Introduces the AP-80

MP-80

product, the IP-130K

thermal printer1984: Introduces the

1989: Phillips introduces

1987: Introduces the LP-5000,

JP-80. A nine-pin color

multi-layer piezo for SIDM

the first domestic

printer

printers

high-performance page

1988: Introduces theprinters

VP-4800, the world’s first

1988: Introduces the CV-2000

48-pin printervideo printer and otherproducts
1988: Discontinues
development of video printers
1990: Launches urgent print

1993: Introduces the LP-8000

head (KH) project

Esper laser printer1993: Introduces the MJ-500.
Equipped with a new print
head. First product for
personal use
1994: Introduces the
MJ-700V2C. First full-color
product. Achieves 720dpi
1990s

using special paper
1996: Introduces the
PM-700C. Realizes“photographic quality”
1998: Introduces the
PM-9000C. LFP withdye-based ink installed
2000: Introduces theMC-9000. Solves pigment ink
loading problem for LFPs

Source: Prepared by the authors from various materials

93.2 Start of IJ technology development
During the second half of the 1970s, research on various printing principles had been conducted at
the experimental lab managed by the design division at Shinshu Seiki, Epson’s predecessor. Despite
being extremely small, a group of 4-5 individuals had conducted basic research on new printing
technologies that might provide alternatives to the impact method.
Development of the IJ technology itself was begun around 1975 at Suwa Seikosha, Shinshu Seiki’s
parent firm. At that time, the development of various printer technologies was carried out at the order ofthe director in charge of technology at Suwa Seikosha. IJ technology was just one of several studied.
Some of the engineers who were involved in IJ technology development at Suwa Seikosha continued
to develop the IJ printer technology after being seconded to the experimental lab at Shinshu Seiki. The
feasibility of IJ technology was glimpsed when the researchers succeeded in ejecting ink and drawing asingle dot for the first time in 1978, and a decision was made to return these seconded engineers to theheadquarters and begin full-scale development. A decision was made to simultaneously also dispatch
Shinshu Seiki engineers to Suwa Seikosha to participate in the IJ technology development. This marked
the start of joint development of the IJ technology by Suwa Seikosha and Shinshu Seiki.
Akio Owatari, who would later play a role in Epson’s IJ technology development, was assigned to theexperimental lab when he joined the company in 1978, and afterwards moved with the development lab
to Suwa Seikosha. For the project, Owatari was given responsibility for developing a new head for the IJ
printer.
During this period a new technology, the Kaiser method, continued to spread as an IJ printer head
manufacturing method. The Kaiser method was a technology that formed multiple nozzles at a time bytranscribing the nozzle pattern on photosensitive glass by light exposure, then etching the pattern. Earlier
technologies produced individual nozzles separately by elongating melted glass to produce a small tube,
much the same way as other glassworks were made. Ink was ejected by wrapping a cylindricalpiezoelectric element around the thin tube and applying voltage (this was called the “Gould” method).
The Kaiser method for forming several nozzles at one time was welcomed by Shinshu Seiki’s engineers
as an extremely epoch-making technology because the wire dots for SIDM printers, which were the main
product at that time, were also produced one by one.
When developing their new IJ printer head, Epson’s engineers obtained a technology license to the
Kaiser method. Epson’s proprietary technology was used for the specific manufacturing process,however. The reason synthetic quartz was utilized for the material in the first print head developed, forexample, was that Epson used its know-how for the manufacture of quartz oscillators for quartz
timepieces. A quartz oscillator is made by placing an electrode within a crystal formed in the shape of atuning fork that has been etched from synthetic quartz. Epson had accumulated this crystal processing
technology through its internal manufacture of quartz oscillators.
Just as when producing a quartz oscillator, an IJ print head is manufactured by spreading resist on asynthetic quartz plate, transcribing a pattern from a mask by exposure and then forming the nozzles,
cavities and flow channels by etching the pattern with hydrogen fluoride. The pattern of the printer headoriginally developed by Epson is illustrated in Figure 2. As shown in the diagram, 12 nozzles are formed
with one pattern. This made it possible to create the basic structure of a head with a total of 24 nozzles byforming this pattern, staggered by one nozzle position, on both sides of synthetic quartz, sealing eachsurface of the synthetic quartz with a plate and then affixing a round piezoelectric element to the cavity
portion. A total of 24 nozzles corresponded to the standard number of pins in SIDM printers at the time.
The new head developed using this technique was named the HG head. The first IJ printer equipped10with the HG head was the IP-130K, which Epson introduced in 1984. Over the next few years, a total by
six IJ printer models equipped with the HG head were put on the market, culminating with the HG-4000,
which was launched in 1990.

Figure 2: Pattern of the HG head

Source: Epson materials

3.3 Problems with the HG headTechnically the IP-130K was a major achievement. Its reliability as a product was extremely low,
however, and its reputation in the market was dismal. Hanaoka, who afterwards was put in charge ofimproving the IP-130K, commented as follows concerning the IP-130K.
Well, it was a terrible product for us. From the moment we began selling it the nozzles
clogged up and it couldn’t eject the ink. It was the ink packs, of course, which had from500cc to a liter of ink, and they would break, spilling ink inside the printer…4
In addition to such reliability problems, one further reason the printer did not enjoy market acceptance
was its steep 500,000 yen price tag. Consequently for the HG-2500, which was introduced after the
IP-130K, Epson labored to lower its costs and reduced the price to 250,000 yen. Even this was not low
enough to compete with dot impact printers, however. Ultimately, Epson’s engineers were unable togreatly reduce the cost of IJ printers for six years, until the launch of the HG-4000. The largest cost factor
was the HG head.
The HG head manufacturing was outsourced to a group company. The initial procurement cost was
about 20,000 yen. Although the cost was subsequently reduced, it fell only to 15,000 yen for 24 nozzles.
In contrast to SIDM printers, which had improved their resolution from 24 pins 48 pins, the HG-4000 wasable to achieve 48 nozzles only through the use of two heads of 24 nozzles each, which drove the cost of
4

Taken from the interview with Hanaoka indicated above.

11

the head up to 30,000 yen.
Another problem was the high cost of the material itself, which remained expensive even after the
initial crystal head material was replaced with ordinary glass. Relative to the size of the piezoelectricelement, the displacement magnitude is small. Although displacement magnitude can be increased bymaking the crystal material thinner, a thin piezoelectric element could not be manufactured sufficiently
using the technology at that time. The engineers therefore had no choice but to enlarge the cavities. This
expanded the head size and drove up its cost. The complexity of the manufacturing process, in whichchrome, gold and resist were deposited in order on the glass plate and then etched using hydrogen
fluoride after the nozzle pattern had been exposed, was a factor behind the high cost as well.
Cost was not the only problem. The HG head faced fundamental hurdles to improving its performance.
First, the nozzle cross section was not a circle but a semicircle because the HG head was formed byetching both sides of the glass. This caused a problem because the jets became plugged and the ink
was not ejected cleanly in straight lies. Other recurring problems included leaking ink and paper jams, forexample, which resulted from the product’s imperfections. These circumstances made it necessary toprovide considerable support after a sale, in order not to harm the trust that the company’s printers hadcome to enjoy.
Moreover, to achieve both increased nozzle density and ensure cavity capacity, long flow channels
had to be provided between the nozzles and cavities, as shown in Figure2. Because the components
could not be arranged when the nozzles and cavities weren’t separated, this resulted in a design withlong channels in the shape of a peacock’s tail. Because of these long channels, the inertance of the ink in
the channels (inertia) increased, and the ink meniscus5 took time to return after ink had been propelledfrom the nozzle. As a result, the time until the next ejection of ink increased, and ink ejection
responsiveness did not improve. When the quantity of ejected ink is increased, the responsiveness falls
further. Leakages of ink around the semicircular nozzles, and failure of the ink to eject at a perpendicularangle because the head was made of glass, also were problems.
These problems meant a high response frequency could not be set and placed a limit on print speed.
Moreover, the low ink discharge became a problem, particularly when printing on ordinary plain paper. At
the time, the assumed target for IJ printers was the SIDM printer market. The SIDM printer was
predicated on its use to print on ordinary paper. Therefore during the development of the IJ printer, Epson
kept in mind printing on plain paper, without the use of special papers. When printing with the HG head,
however, clean characters on plain paper was difficult because of the low ink discharge quantity. The
only way Epson could respond to this problem was to develop a new extremely strong alkali ink of pH13.
Because plain papers at that time were acid-sized, use of a strong alkaline ink caused the paper surface
to dissolve momentarily, enabling the ink to vertically soak cleanly into the paper.
As this illustrates, the HG head faced several fundamental problems. The development team was
sufficiently aware of this fact as well. Because this was not a major problem when the market focus for
SIDM printers was on businesses, however, no fundamental countermeasures were taken. Epson wasable to ensure a certain market simply based on the product’s characteristics, namely that it was
somewhat faster and quieter than dot impact printers.
The introduction of the “DeskJet” printer by HP altered these circumstances completely.
3.4 The DeskJet shock
5

The convex or concave curved surface formed on the surface of a liquid because of boundary tension.

12

Behind Epson’s development of the HG series for business uses was the steady progress by othercompanies to make personal printers in step with the spread of personal computers. The appearance of
bubble jet IJ printers became a particularly large threat for Epson.
The bubble jet IJ printer designed in 1975 was commercialized at nearly the same time as theintroduction of the piezo method IJ printer by Epson. In 1984, HP put its ThinkJet on the market, and in1985 Canon introduced its BJ-80. Compared with Epson’s IP-130K, which cost about 500,000 yen(approximately 2,000 dollar), the ThinkJet and BJ-80 were 495 dollars and 679 dollars, respectively,
making both products overwhelmingly dominant from a price perspective compared with Epson’s offering.
Lowering the price below the 1,000 dollar level meant the products were aimed squarely at the home use
market. It was totally impossible for Epson to achieve such a price using the IJ technology at the time.
Just as the price, but even more shocking, was the disposable head concept that HP presented with
the ThinkJet. A definite weak point of the bubble jet method when compared with the piezo method had
been the low durability of the head. A piezoelectric element can be used almost permanently. On theother hand a bubble jet head, which applies heat using a heater, has a fundamentally short life. It had
been thought that no matter how much Canon and HP pursued bubble jet development, Epson’s
dominance in this respect would never be shaken. If printer heads became disposable, however,durability would no longer be an issue. The appearance of the disposable head immediately placed thepiezo method at a competitive disadvantage.
What further decided the bubble jet’s dominance was the introduction of the DeskJet from HP in 1988.
No matter how low the price was, until then the number of nozzles available with the bubble jet method
was small and resolution was limited (ThinkJet was 96dpi). DeskJet, however, was put on the market at alow price of 1,200 dollars while achieving a resolution of 300dpi. In addition, in 1990 HP introduced its
DeskJet500, which ensured the same resolution of 300dpi and reduced the price even further. The
DeskJet500 market price dropped below the 500-dollar level in 1991 (Fujiwara, 2002). In October 1990,
Canon introduced its BJ-10v, which also achieved 360dpi. With its excellent printing speed, this productoverwhelmingly won support from personal computer users and became a global smash hit product(Fujiwara, 2002).
On the other hand, even though the HG-4000 put on the market by Epson during this same period
only had a resolution of 360dpi it carried a price tag of about 300,000 yen. The difference with the bubble
jet camp was manifest.
The debut of the bubble jet method was predicted to affect not only Epson’s IJ printer but SIDM
printers as well, which were the industry’s top moneymaker. Fully half of Epson’s earnings at the time
were from SIDM printers, with Europe and the U.S. market accounting for 90-95% of sales. If the prices
were equivalent, the IJ printer with its overwhelmingly better resolution and quiet operation would win out.
In fact, the DeskJet rapidly eroded the market for Epson’s SIDM printers, primarily in the U.S. market.
Akio Owatari described the impact at the time as follows.
The DeskJet was a real shocker. We thought that if we stayed with the HG now, well, thegame would be all over. We felt a powerful threat that every printer would become a thermal
jet printer, and they would capture every printer market, not just the dot (impact)6.
In addition, electrophotographic method printers were attacking at the high-priced end of the market.
6

From the interviews with Owatari by the authors. September 20, 2007. Conducted at Epson’s Hirooka Office.

13

In 1984, Canon introduced the LBP-CX, which used a laser beam, and by 1986 had sold 550,000 units
worldwide. For Seiko Epson this success, on top of the success of the bubble jet method, created asense the company’s very survival was at stake. Because the top price of Epson’s highly profitable
impact printers was for a business product selling in the 1,000-2,000 dollar range, this put it squarely incompetition with laser printers.
Thus in the latter half of the 1980s, Epson found itself under attack on two fronts in the market for its
mainstay SIDM printers; bubble jet IJ printers were encroaching on the low price machine segment, whilelaser printers had invaded the high-priced segment. Immediate action was needed.

4. Response to the DeskJet: Two Programs
Following the introduction of the DeskJet in 1988, the efforts at Epson to develop a new IJ printerwere carried out at both the Printer Design Department and the TP Design Department (for Epson’s
corporate organization at that time, see Figure 3). Although both departments pursued development
independently, the result was the epoch-making MACH head, which was completed by uniting thetechnologies developed by the Printer Design Department and the TP Design Department.

Figure 3: Overview of the Printer Business Division organization (October 1989)

Printer Operations
DivisionNO.2 PrinterOperations
DivisionNO.1 PrinterOperations
Division

Printer Design
Department

TP Design
Department
TP Engineering
Department
TP Production
Department
Note: Printer Division II was responsible for miniprinters, and Printer Division I was in charge of terminal printers(SIDM printers and IJ printers).
Source: Prepared by excerpting from the Seiko Epson Ltd. organization chart (October 21, 1989) only theorganizations related to the case described in this paper.

4.1 Response in the Printer Design Department
As bubble jet IJ printers and laser printers were being successively placed on the market, it became14clear the HG head absolutely could not compete. Consequently, in 1987 Haruhiko Koto, who had beentransferred from the Printer Design Department to the TP Design Department for commercialization of
the HG series, returned to the Printer Design Department and turned his focus to development of thepiezo method print head to parry the bubble jet printers (in February 1989 Koto was fully transferred to
the Printer Design Department). When Koto became general manager of the Printer Design Department,
the focus of development was placed on IJ technology development at the Printer Design Department,
but as will be described later, development of IJ technology continued at the TP Design Department as
well, mainly among the remaining engineers. Accordingly, from the closing years of the 1980s into the1990s, IJ technology development at Epson was conducted independently in both the Printer Design
Department and the TP Design Department.
The Printer Design Department initially explored a method called VIC (Vibrator in Cavity), which useda thermoplastic polymer hot melt and ejected ink by means of an oscillator moving up and down in the ink
chamber. As can be understood from its adoption of a hot melt ink, the focus can be said to have beenon print quality that would be able to compete with the electrophotographic method and offer the IJ
printer’s ease of use. The engineers were unable to develop a highly practical product with this system,
however.
Consequently, in 1988 it was decided to once again concentrate development resources on IJ
technology development. Traditionally in the Printer Design Department, development of video printersand laser printers was conducted in parallel with the IJ printer. The mid-1980s was a time when electronic
still cameras were introduced in a rush by camera companies and electronics manufacturers. For acertain number of years during this period, video printers had also garnered attention as one type of
output device.
Electronic still cameras failed to capture the market’s interest, however, and similarly there was little
demand for video printers. Epson was commercializing its video printer at its plant of the NO.2 PrinterOperations Division in Okaya City, Nagano Prefecture, but had to withdraw from the business because of
the dismal operating results. Therefore from about 1987 about 50 development team members were
gradually reassigned to IJ technology development. The video printer development team was finallydisbanded in October 1988, and all of the engineers were integrated into the IJ printer development
team.
Here a new IJ printer development team about 100 members strong was reconstituted. Two of theindividuals who were transferred from video printer development at this time and would later play acentral role in Epson’s IJ technology development were Haruo Nakamura and Minoru Usui.
4.1.1 Development of the MLP
Usui was in charge of IJ head development. Usui initially was requested to continue the developmentof a print head using hot melt, but judged this avenue showed no promise and decided to design aproprietary method. Usui thought that if they could get the ink to fly freely, they would be able to achieve
overwhelming performance. Usui described the situation at the time as follows.
A head that thoroughly controls the ink ejection thoroughly controls the essence of inkjet
printing and is absolutely indispensable. [...] at about the time I was a middle school student,
there was a boxer named Cassius Clay (Mohammed Ali) who would say, “Float like abutterfly, sting like a bee,” and that’s how I imagined it would work. If we could just freely

15

control the ink, its flight would be absolutely true7.
In order for the ink to fly freely, it was first necessary to ensure sufficient force to propel the ink. For
that, it was necessary to master thin piezoelectric elements, which can obtain substantial deformation ata low voltage. The amount of deformation of the piezoelectric element is proportional to the “electric fieldstrength” of the voltage divided by the thickness of the piezoelectric element. If the thickness can be
reduced by half, twice the amount of deformation can be obtained.
In a conventional HG head, in which a piezoelectric element of about 100μm in thickness was used,
the amount of deformation even at a voltage of 100V or more was only 0.1μm. At this voltage the power
supply is bulky and the manufacturing cost is high. Moreover, because the amount of deformation issmall, the cavities had to be shallow and the surface area had to be enlarged, factors that prevented
miniaturization. In addition, the weak force with which ink was propelled was linked to the low level of print
quality. This was because the ink droplets would be ejected in a long, slender pillar shape. If the ink
droplets are not spheroidal, they will not form a perfectly round dot at impact with the recording medium,and minute quantities of ink, called satellites, are scattered around the droplet.
Thin piezoelectric elements were difficult to produce because they are made of ceramic and become
highly fragile when fired. Traditionally a block of piezo element material was thinly sliced, and then affixed
to the cavities. With this method, thin piezo are always exceedingly difficult to handle. Therefore theprocedure Usui came up with was a method to produce the piezo as part of the structure itself prior to
firing. This creates a structure that layers the piezoelectric elements like strips of paper. The structure isaffixed vertically to the cavities, and the ink is ejected by causing the elements to deform in a verticaldirection (see Figure 4). Although this resulted in a structurally complex print head, it made it possible toachieve a thin piezo element. Moreover, because the piezoelectric elements are placed perpendicular tothe cavities, the developers were able to achieve bigger displacement and increase nozzle density byextending the piezo length. Finally, the manufacturing technology was considered to be sufficiently
proven because laminated ceramic capacitors had already arrived on the market, and the technicalhurdle was judged to not be high.
Usui took this idea and requested production from domestic ceramic manufacturers. At this juncture,
the Netherlands electronics giant Phillips brought a laminated piezo made of superimposed piezoelectricelements to Epson in October 1989 for use in the print head drive of SIDM printers. In contrast to themethod of wire pins moved by electromagnets, which was the main technique at that time, Phillips
proposed moving the ink with piezoelectric elements. Usui, his superior Koto and Osamu Koshiishi, themanager of SIDM head development (chief, general manager and section chief), occasionally sat induring these sales calls. Usui and the other realized they could use this product not for the SIDM printerbut for their piezo method IJ printer, and when they obtained and tested a sample it was clear they could
obtain a deformation of 1μm at an applied voltage of 30V with the laminated piezoelectric element. They
therefore decided to develop a print head using this laminated piezoelectric element. This head wasnamed the MLP (Multi Layer Piezo).

7

From the interviews with Usui by the authors. March 30, 2007. Conducted at Epson’s head quarter.

16

Figure 4: Structure of an MLP

Source: Epson resource materials

4.1.2

MLChips development

While these developments led the members of the Printer Design Department to focus ondevelopment of the MLP, Usui sought to develop one more head besides the MLP. Certainly from thestandpoints of increasing nozzle density and obtaining displacement at low voltage, the MLP waspromising. However, the MLP had a complex structure, and there was concern about whether cost
reductions sufficient to compete with bubble jet printers could be achieved. Like a conventional HG head,the method of affixing a thin piezo on the cavities was superior from the standpoint of structural simplicity8.
If the piezoelectric element could be made thinner with this system, that would yield the best result. Toeject ink sufficiently, the piezoelectric element had to have a thickness of about 20μm. It was also
understood, however, that this thickness was unachievable using existing technologies.
Consequently Usui decided to develop, in cooperation with an outside ceramic firm with which he had
exchanged information for video printer development, a process to build the ink chambers using aceramic laminated body, thinly apply the piezo elements using a screen printing process and then bakethe entire product. If this method were successful, the piezoelectric elements would never be damaged
because the product would be baked after spreading the piezo elements on a solid ceramic structure.
There would be a cost advantage as well, because the entire product could be processed at one time.
Although inferior in comparison with the MLP from the point of nozzle density, productivity isoverwhelmingly excellent. The head produced using this system was called the MLChips (Multi Layer
Ceramic Hyper Integrated Piezo Segments) (see Figure 5).

8This creates a bimetal structure with the vibrate plate sandwiched between the cavities and the piezoelectric element.

17

Figure 5: Structure of an MLChips

Source: Epson resource materials

Even as engineers at the Printer Design Department turned to the development of MLP for the time
being, Usui laid out a road map for MLChips as the next technology to complement MLP, based on his
cooperation with the outside ceramics firm.
Epson prepared both MLP and MLChips because it was contemplating the competition with bubble
jet products. Usui says he thought that “with just MLP, given the complexity of its structure we’d only have
limited success against bubble jets.” Bubble jet heads are extremely simple structurally because they arebasically just a heater attached to the ink chamber. They are also easy to mass-produce. There are no
major limits on increasing nozzle density. So, both low cost and nozzle density can be achieved. With thepiezo method, however, one or the other is fundamentally sacrificed. With MLP the cost rises, while with
MLChips it is difficult to increase density. Usui therefore thought that by developing two types, they could
go head-to-head with bubble jet printers. Usui’s thinking is illustrated in Figure 6.

18

Figure 6: Trade-off between cost competitiveness and nozzle density

Source: Prepared by the authors based on interviews

4.1.3 A third method: Development of TFPAttacking the bubble jet from both sides with MLP and MLChips was the immediate strategy, but in his
mind Usui had already plotted an ultimate stance. Usui described this as follows.
It had to be small and inexpensive from the get-go. That meant the piezo had to be reallythin. But we hadn’t found a means that would enable us to realistically do that soon. The
principle was understood. But when we applied voltage, the elements failed. So we worked
with the idea that ultimately wanted to replace them with something else9.
When the problem is considered by going back to basics, with a structure like MLChips the thinnest
piezoelectric element as possible is paramount. It was not thought feasible to achieve this goal with theexisting technology in 1990. But it would have to be achieved in the future. Therefore in 1990, Usuirequested that technology development of a head using the thinnest piezo would be conducted throughthe corporate R&D, not at the operating division. The technology is called TFP (Thin Film Piezo). Epson
decided that, for the moment, four or five members in the corporate R&D would be assigned to thisdevelopment. During this basic development, members were transferred to the operating division around1995. Later, full-scale commercialization of TFP would begin in 2002, and would finally be achieved in
the spring of 2007, 17 years after the start of development.
Usui laid out three directions for Epson’s IJ technology in this manner in 1989, and then moved to put
them into effect. One was MLP, which would be tackled the most emphatically at the moment. The focus
was on achieving nozzle density to compete with DeskJet. The second was MLChips, which could be
9Taken from the interview with Usui described above.

19

mass produced. Because internal resources were devoted to MLP, development advanced jointly withthe outside firm. And finally there was TFP. This was the ultimate technology, held close to the vest as
in-house technology, but because it was not at the stage where it could be handled at the Operations
Division, Epson chose the course of accumulating the technology at the corporate R&D department. Usuioffered the following comment.
We had to do both what was possible right now, and maintain its long-term competitivenessas a device10.
4.1.4 Meniscus control
One more method Usui had considered to compete with bubble jet technology was freely controllingthe ejected ink droplets. This was expressed by the Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) metaphor mentioned
earlier. There was no question that compared to bubble jet, the piezo method fell short on the point of
nozzle density. If small ink droplets could be expelled from the same nozzle, however, this would achieve
the same effect as small nozzles even if the number of nozzles were fewer. Fortunately, with the piezo
method it is possible control the quantity of ink expelled by varying how the voltage is applied, because
the ink is ejected by the physical displacement of the piezoelectric element. Compared with the bubble jetmethod, this is clearly superior.
This type of ink droplet control is referred to as meniscus control. The term “meniscus” indicates the
ink boundary aspect generated at the nozzle tip. The first device to achieve highly detailed color picture
by means of meniscus control was the PM-700, which was introduced in 1996 as described below.
4.2 The Kinkyu Head Project (KH Project)
In 1988, the Printer Design Department’s resources were concentrated on IJ technology development,
and the possibility of realizing the MLP became evident in 1989 when the developers learned of Phillips’
multi-layer piezo. Consequently, Epson decided to undertake the development of a new IJ head at theoperating headquarters. Specifically, a cross-function project involving 80 individuals in total centered on
the Printer Design Department was formed in June 1990. This project under the general manager’s directcontrol was called the “Kinkyu Head Project (KH Project).” The exigency of IJ head development was
shown literally in the initials of the project’s name (“kinkyu” is Japanese for “urgent”). Various engineersfrom other operating headquarters’ departments and head office divisions, including engineers withknowledge and experience in optics and crystals, were assembled for the KH project.
The KH Project objective was to develop a piezo method IJ printer with quality and cost performance
surpassing that available from either laser printers or bubble jet IJ printers. Specifically, the statedobjectives were to further extend the piezo method’s strengths in terms of ink ejection control, ink
selection possibilities and print head durability, and eliminate the piezo method’s weaknesses byreducing the cost and printer size. It was also necessary to ensure the product would be able to support
the shift to color printing and greater speed in the future. The project was specifically given the goal ofcommercialization of the MLP.
In addition to the KH Project, two other cross-function projects were formed in the Printer Operations
Division at that time (both were projects centered on the TP Design Department). One, called the “KL
Project,” was a project concerning laser printer development. This was a project that sought to respond to10

Taken from the interview with Usui described above.

20

the growing laser printer market by procuring laser engines from OEM and commercializing laser printers.
The second effort, dubbed the “KS Project,” was aimed at shrinking the size of Epson’s SIDM printersand reducing their price, in order to maintain Epson’s competitiveness in the home printer market.
In other words, over the short term Epson was responding to low-price IJ printers by miniaturizing
SIDM and lowering their price, and addressing the high-priced laser printer segment based on OEM. The
scenario was one that sought to establish, as rapidly as possible, IJ technologies that would surpass bothcompeting technologies. In both cases, the key would be the development of MLP that could overtake
bubble jet technology.
The KH project had two major themes. One was the development of an IJ head for serial printers, andthe other was the development of IJ technology for page printers. The latter was a type to use hot melt for
the ink. The former targeted the bubble jet market, while the latter was aimed at the electrophotographic
systems market. Ultimately it was the former type that was commercialized.
Activity under the KH Project moved forward, and the rough technological concept for the MLP was
decided in April 1991. Although the project was still unable to cause ink to eject as it wanted, Usui judged
the development site should be moved to design because the orientation for commercialization had beenclarified, and taking several subordinates he moved to the TP Design Department, while concurrently
keeping responsibility for the Printer Design Department. Usui described his decision at that time asfollows.
I thought that carrying out design would accelerate the specific commercialization process,so I moved to the TP Design Department while continuing my development duties. Because
design is absolutely essential for commercialization, I thought that, rather than linking
development to a shifting target, we could probably go to commercialization with what had
already been decided at that point, [...] so even though we still weren’t able to get everythingworking sufficiently, I moved to design while concurrently continuing with development11.
Despite having moved to the TP Design Department, his group was unable to obtain sufficient
cooperation for commercialization, even though it received various orders from the TP Design
Department, because the head was still not sufficiently completed. For example, even though he wascontemplating a resolution of 360dpi, Usui received a proposal to lower this to 300dpi because that was
the resolution of HP’s printers. In the end, the TP Design Department judged that conditions still did notenable MLP to be commercialized. Moreover, as described below the HG-5130, a new model equippedwith a new head that was developed separately by the TP Design Department at about that time, wasbeing readied for market introduction in the fall (October 1991 product launch; see the following section).
The situation was one in which the TP Design Department wanted Usui’s team to assist
commercialization of the model the TP Design Department had developed itself.
Consequently in July 1991 Usui returned temporarily from the TP Design Department to the PrinterDesign Department to concentrate once more on perfecting the MLP. Then, in October 1991, he madeanother presentation to the TP Design Department because the development team had succeeded in
expelling ink as intended. The TP Design Department also continued at that time with its development ofa low-cost head for the next HG-5130 model, but the head’s performance was inadequate, and thedecision was made to go ahead with MLP mass production development.
11

Taken from the interview with Usui described above.

21

The new MLP head was named a MACH print head (Multi-layer Actuator Head) (in the United States
it was called the MicroPiezo). The first model equipped with the MACH head was put on early sale in the
U.S. in December 1992 as the Stylus-800. The same model was afterwards introduced in Japan in
March 1993 as the MJ-500. This was Epson’s first product for the personal printer market and was priced
at 74,800 yen. With this, a method to counterattack the bubble method was finally in place.
Further cost reductions and performance enhancements were required to fully capture the personal
printer market, however. Internally, a proposal from Canon to purchase the bubble jet method head was
also studied because lowering the cost of the MLP was considered impossible. In fact, at the same time
the MJ-500 was introduced, the TP Design Department replaced just the MJ-500 head component with abubble jet head purchased from Canon and introduced this product to the market as the MJ-300. The
MJ-300 achieved net sales beyond Epson’s forecast.
With the MJ-300 supporting the low-end of the market, downward pressure on the MJ-500 price was
eased and Epson was able to successfully establish its personal printer business. This situation, however,was viewed with annoyance by Usui, who had developed the MACH head. It motivated Usui to pursue
further technical development. Usui used the following words to describe the circumstances at the time.
I mean, as business management I understood it and did it, because if we weren’t able todevelop the head we wouldn’t be able to develop the ink jet, but it wasn’t so interesting, yousee. [...] but I did it because I absolutely did not want to lose...12.
To actually achieve the MACH print head, one more critical technology in additional to themultilayered piezo was necessary. This was a metal nozzle plate. The technology was developed
through the head development process undertaken at the TP Design Department.
4.3 Development Process in the TP Design Department
With the appearance of HP’s DeskJet it became obvious, even to the development team members in
the TP Design Department who had commercialized the HG series, that Epson was completely out of therunning with the HG head. Epson’s development of the IJ technology was put back in the hands of the
Printer Design Department when Koto, who had commanded the TP Design Department, wastransferred back to Printer Design Department in 1987, but even so, the TP Design Department wasn’t
folding its hands either. The MACH head might be able to give bubble jet a run for its money, if it could be
brought to fruition. Time was limited, however. Could it really be developed on schedule? With suchfeelings of trepidation, even the TP Design Department decided to pursue development of a productcapable of meeting the immediate market. Otawari, who as a section chief in the TP Design Department
was in charge of commercialization, recalled that period with the following description.
This (the introduction of DeskJet) was not good. The MACH jet could certainly be madedenser. But new technology development usually takes time. Even when you’re
experienced it can’t be done easily. I thought that even if new materials come along, we
probably wouldn’t be able to turn it into something quickly. My thinking was that if we could
do (the MACH jet), we should move on to developing that next. Even so, I thought it would
most likely take four or five years. It seemed to me, when I looked out five years ahead, that
12

Taken from the interview with Usui described above.

22

we’d never be able to win with HG. Whatever, we had to improve our responsiveness.
Because we were no match for that (DeskJet). We had to do something, anything13.
The HG head’s weak points were clear. One was the high cost that resulted from using glass as thematerial and using a group company for the processing. Another was deterioration of the print quality
because of the difficulty in increasing nozzle density from a design standpoint, the long path between thenozzle and cavity, which caused responsiveness and ink ejection to worsen and made miniaturizationdifficult, and the semicircular nozzle shape. The objective became development of a head that would be
able to compete in the market for four or five years after such problems were solved.
To lower the cost, the design team decided to first switch the head material from glass to plastic that
could be injection molded and to manufacture the head in-house. Hanaoka, who as design generalmanager at the time supervised this development, looked back on the period as follows.
…There were those plastic cavities that I kept thinking, shouldn’t we give these up already?
Or should we commercialize them again? The product that we wondered if we should pickup and try the cavities was the 5130 (the HG-5130; see below), which had already throwninto the trash once14.
Together with adopting the plastic cavities, a fundamental re-design was undertaken to shorten the
distance between the nozzle and the cavity. The cross-section structure of one nozzle of this new head isshown in Figure 7. As indicated in the figure, the ink chamber is made by molding plastic from both sides,
the bottom surface in the diagram is sealed with another plastic layer and the oscillation plate andpiezoelectric element are attached. The ink path was made by opening a hole afterward, using an
excimer laser. The SUS nozzle plate described later is then attached to the upper surface of the head.
One head was formed by arranging 48 of these structures on a large plastic plate.
As shown by the cross-sectional view, a characteristic of this head is the short ink path compared with
the HG head. This design resulted from seeking a responsiveness just to compete with DeskJet. Nozzle
density, however, did not reach the density available with bubble jet. Therefore to achieve 360dpi, amethod to improve resolution by diagonally installing the head was adopted.

13
14

Taken from the interview with Otawari described above.
Taken from the interview with Hanaoka described above.

23

Figure 7: Structure of the head developed by the TP Design Department (cross-section)

Note: The arrow in the diagram shows the ink flow.
Source: Prepared by the authors based on interviews

4.3.1 Nozzle plate development
Using plastic for the nozzle material in this way helped to sharply lower the cost, but presented
problems in terms of durability of the plastic nozzles. The design team therefore decided to make only thecavities from plastic, and then form the nozzles by opening holes in a stainless steel plate. If the shape ofthe nozzle tip is not close to a perfectly round circle, however, the print quality deteriorates because theink droplets will not form a perfectly round dot when they make contact with the recording medium.
Another method is to open the holes using a laser, but this leaves burn traces and the holes are not
perfectly round. Consequently Epson decided on press processing. Opening minute holes in a metal
plate with any thickness is not easy, however. Punching holes also produces burrs, and if this produces astumpy, thin hole it creates increased resistance along the ink path, causing response to deteriorate. The
design team thought it would be best if a taper shape like a funnel could be formed with the upper part of
the hole cross section wide and the lower part narrow, but such complex processing was not consideredfeasible on the production technology side. Nevertheless, the production engineers led by Nagamitsu
Takashima achieved this. Owatari commented on their success.
This result surprised me as well. From (production) technology we were told, “Whatever you
do, make us the best design.” Anyway, maybe they thought they probably couldn’t do it, butwhen they tried it they found out they could15.
An extremely high level of precision processing technology developed for processing watch bearings
had been accumulated at Epson. This had evolved into the component processing technology for SIDM,
and was now used for the IJ head. Finally the precision press processing technology that could produce
a nozzle leading-edge with a diameter of only 30μm was completed. By adopting this metal nozzle plate,print head manufacturing time and cost were reduced by two-thirds.
One more epoch-making outcome during development of the nozzle plate was the Teflon surface
15

Taken from the interview with Otawari described above.

24

processing. When ink is ejected, the nozzle plate surface gets wet. If this wetness is not uniform, theremaining ink droplet obstructs the nozzle and the ink is not ejected perfectly. The design team therefore
decided to put a water-repellent coating on the surface. Specifically they adopted a method of mixing
nickel in Teflon powder, and then melting the mixture and plating the surface. Plating the nozzle plateafter the holes had been processed to ensure the holes were not plugged required exceedingly difficult
technology, but Epson was able to establish this technology as well.
4.3.2 Introduction of the HG-5130 and further problems
The HG-5130 model equipped with a print head that incorporated this metallic nozzle plate wasintroduced to the market in October 1991. Although priced at 226,000 yen, roughly 50,000 yen less thanthe previous model, it was still expensive compared with products from Canon or HP.
There remained problems with the new head. One was its cost. The head had become cheaper but
still cost from 6,000 to 8,000 yen. One reason the cost did not drop was the nozzle plate’s steep price.
Another problem was the difficulty of molding the plastic. Although the structure was simpler than that of
the HG head, complex metal molds had to be used in order to leave the portion where the ink channel
would be processed thin. The cost of this metal mold also pushed up the total cost. The depreciation andamortization expense for the excimer lasers used to open the holes for the ink channel from the rear was
also high. At the time Epson had purchased three excimer laser units for 100 million yen each.
During the development of the HG-5130, Epson also developed new inks. As indicated previously,
Epson envisaged acid-sized paper begin used with the HG series and decided on strong alkaline ink.
When targeting household use, however, strong alkali inks could not be used. Moreover, this was aperiod when there was a major shift form acid-sized paper to acid-free paper, and this also meant Epson
would have to change its conventional inks. Consequently the design team adopted the low penetration
ink, the same type used with HP’s DeskJet. With this type of ink, however, print quality cannot be
maintained unless more ink droplets are used. This made it necessary to make the displacement of thepiezoelectric element even larger than in earlier print heads.
4.3.3 Development of a low-cost headIn parallel with development of the MACH head, a group working with Owatari in the TP Design
Department began development of a head to succeed the head used in the HG-5130. Owatari wanted totransfer every printer to the MACH head if it could be perfected, but progress on MACH headdevelopment was unsatisfactory. In fact, although they had gotten the head out of design once, it had
been returned to development because the technology was imperfect. If the MACH head wasn’t turned
into a product, they would no longer be able to count on the Printer Design Department. Instructions
came down from Hanaoka, the general manager, for the TP Design Department to also begin
preparations immediately for the next product.
Even Owatari began to have doubts about the MACH head’s feasibility. He didn’t believe Epson could
do battle with the bubble jet camp for four years using the HG-5130 head, however. Some newtechnology was necessary. Looking back at that period, Owatari used these words to describe thesituation.
The most troublesome component was the multi-layer piezo. Could we really make it thinlike a strip of paper? There would probably be voids. Plus we’d have to overlap the25photoresists16. Our concern was whether we would be able to compete with DeskJet.
DeskJet is made from one layer. The MACH head configuration was complicated17.
Owatari therefore believed they needed to fundamentally resolve the foremost problem with the
HG-5130 head – its cost. Lowering the cost would require not using the expensive nozzle plate coatedwith Teflon and making everything, including the nozzles, from plastic. It was also necessary to rethink
the complicated ink channel structure utilizing both sides of the base and the water-repellent treatment of
the nozzles.
The head structure designed as a result of this study called for forming the ink chamber, ink channels
and cavities on one side of the plastic substrate and sealing this component with a plastic top plate, thenapplying an organic water-repellent treatment to the nozzle surface (side surface) and opening the nozzle
holes using the excimer laser. While the nozzle density was not increased with this structure, asubstantial cost reduction effect was achieved. It also had implications in terms of the excimer laser
depreciation expense. From start to finish, it was a design that emphasized cost.
The nozzles opened by application of the organic water-repellent treatment and excimer laser
processing, however, had a fatal flaw – the ink did not seep from the nozzles uniformly and was not
expelled straight. At about the time this problem was being studied, Usui, who had returned to the PrinterDesign Department and developed the MACH head, gave a presentation. If they were able to produce
the MACH head, there was nothing standing in the way of adopting the head. In addition, from his
communications with the production engineers and technicians, Owatari was certain the MACH head
would be competitive. Furthermore, the appearance on the market in the early 1990s of resins withexcellent bonding characteristics also increased the MACH head’s feasibility. Owatari described thesituation as follows.
I realized we would be able to go with the MACH when I asked the manager in charge of the
production technology if it was possible to make the head and he replied, “This (the MACH)
is easier.” When I heard this I thought, we can go. If we could really make (the (MACH head)
more easily, we could achieve a positive mass production effect and our yields would go up
because of the small size. Because (unlike the plastic head, the MACH) multi-workprocessing is doable and the heads could be made all at once18.
As a result it was decided to halt all head development at the TP Design Department and integrate
everything into development of the MACH head. Usui had led the MACH head commercialization anddevelopment at the TP Design Department. Owatari, on the other hand, was reshuffled to the PrinterDesign Department in place of Usui, where he succeeded to Usui’s projects while simultaneously
beginning work on the shift to color printers, the next big development.

16

For the initial MACH head, the development team had adopted a complicated method to form the head by accumulatingand etching layers of photosensitive resins.
17
Taken from the interview with Otawari described above.
18
Taken from the interview with Otawari described above.

26

5. Color Printer Development
5.1 The shift to color based on development of related technology
At about the time Epson put its MJ-500 on the market, HP had begun introducing color printers as its
latest product. Despite the fact there was as yet no demand at that time for printing New Year’s cards, letalone digital images for which color printing is a must, thermal transfer color printers had been sold aspart of the personal computer craze. The shift to color IJ printers was viewed as an inevitable step. The
order came down from the division manager to Owatari, who had finished development of the HG-5130
and transferred from the TP Design Department to the Printer Design Department, to put out a color
printer as soon as possible.
Moving to color printers, however, was not a problem solved simply by adding colored inks. Making
the transition to color, which required not only the print head but also the development and combinationof related technologies such as inks and papers, picture processing algorithms and the paper feedmechanism.
First improvements in the inks were demanded. Owatari, who majored in chemistry at college, knewthat color inks required characteristics different from those of monochrome inks, and had been working
on the development of color inks since about 1986.
When color inks with the same characteristics as monochrome inks are adopted, the inks bleed into
one another and produce mixed colors. This is because monochrome inks are low penetration inks. With
low penetration ink, the water in the ink evaporates after the ink is ejected onto paper, leaving only thedye adhered to the paper. As a result a sharp, clean black character remains on the paper surface. Suchink requires about ten seconds to adhere to the paper, however. Therefore when the low penetration ink
is adopted for color inks, each ink is ejected before the previously ejected ink has dried, causing the inks
to bleed and produce mixed colors.
Therefore Epson first decided to switch to inks that would penetrate paper quickly. The problem withtraditional inks, however, was that sharp, clean dots could not be formed because the adhered ink would
flow and be absorbed horizontally along the paper fibers. Therefore the permeable constituentscomposing the inks were studied and “Super Penetration Ink” that enabled inks to uniformly penetrate
paper was developed. Because this ink adheres to paper within several milliseconds, color mixing does
not occur even if different color inks successively are adhered to the paper. With this it seemed that theshift to full-color was now possible.
Print head trouble came to light in the spring of 1993, however. As the result of an investigation it
became clear this was because the cavity had not been properly polymerized. Because the super
penetrating ink contains a large amount of solvent, the cavity is formed by mixing epoxy resin that canwithstand the solvent with acrylic resin and placing these photoresists in layers. In conventional
processing, the cavity was first hardened using ultraviolet light, and this was then heated and attached to
the vibration plate under pressure. With this method, however, acrylic resin was polymerized only toabout 60-70%. Therefore the ink would be absorbed into the acrylic resin, causing the cavity andvibration plate to peel away, or the cavity resin to flake, as a result. Consequently Otawari, working with
the Production Engineering Department, hit upon the solution of irradiating with an electron beam during
the final phase of traditional processing. The electron beam penetrated the metallic vibration plate,enabling polymerization of the resin to be increased. Thus the print head problem was eventually solved.
Yet even though the ink and print head problems were overcome, the problem of print speed – A4
27

size color prints took several minutes, while nearly ten minutes was required in the case of graphic
printing because of the time needed for photo processing – remained unsolved. Therefore to give theproduct a remarkable feature that would negate the print speed issue, it was decided to boost resolution
to 720dpi. Hanaoka was the administrator with responsibility for commercialization, and recalled thethinking at the time as follows.
Monochrome printers were subject to price competition. So this situation couldn’t bereversed with monochrome printers alone. If you think about it from the entire flow, theMJ-500 came out first, followed by color, 720dpi and prices under 100,000 yen. From a spec
standpoint as well it was hopelessly late. The idea was to put out a product like no other inthe world, even though it required a ridiculous (amount of time)19.
To improve the resolution, the dot diameter must be reduced. Expelling extremely minute dots for a
resolution of 720dpi using a print head designed for 360dpi resolution is impossible, however. Epson
therefore adopted the revolutionary idea of developing paper to retain the minute ink dots and improving
the print head movement and paper feed method.
The quantity of ink in a droplet at that time was 40pl. This was the appropriate quantity of ink for the
ink to adhere to paper and create a dot diameter of roughly 100μm assuming plain paper printing at aresolution of 360dpi. In contrast, to support 720dpi printing the dot diameter would have to be reduced to40-50μm. For this purpose, special paper was jointly developed with a paper manufacturer. Next,
improvements were added in the form of reducing by half the horizontal traveling distance (resolution) of
the print head, and the distance by which the paper is fed lengthwise into the printer.
As a result of the development of the related technologies described above the MJ-700V2C, Epson’s
first full-color product, was introduced in June 1994. This product, which was put on the market without agreat deal of confidence in-house, was priced at 98,000 yen and supported 360dpi with plain paper andhigh-resolution at 720dpi with special paper, and went on to sell 360,000 units domestically and 2.4
million units in markets around the world within one year of its launch. Considering that the entire
domestic printer market for all systems at that time had been in the 300,000 unit range, the explosive
sales of this product are readily apparent.
5.2 Evolution of the MACH print head and realization of “photographic image quality”
With the launch of its MJ-700V2C, Epson successfully made the shift to color printers. Yet from the
beginning Usui, who had developed the video printer, and Nakamura, who had been promoted togeneral manager of the Printer Design Department, had sought not merely to shift to color equipment but
to print color photographs. Consequently neither of them was satisfied with the MJ-700V2C’s prints,
which were “pretty, but they’re not photographs.” To achieve “photographic image quality,” further
development of related technology was necessary, just as it had been to realize the transition to color
printing.
First, with regard to ink it was abundantly clear that low penetration ink was capable of printing
beautifully. Because high-permeation inks soak into paper too much, the colors of these inks graduallythin out. Consequently, in order to leave clear black images, in June 1995 Epson introduced to themarket the MJ-800C, which returned to low penetration ink only for monochrome ink.
19

Taken from the interview with Hanaoka described above.

28

The result of this decision, however, was a greater than predicted negative market reception
regarding the mixed colors. It also resulted in claims that images printed with the special paper developed
a red tinge if placed near a humidifier. The reason was the color material used in the magenta ink was
highly soluble, and in a high humidity environment this ink would dissolve again and the magenta dot
diameter would expand, even if the special paper to constrain the dot diameter to 40-50μmI was used.
Because it had conducted its endurance tests at about 85% humidity, Epson did not realize prior to
putting the product on the market, that such a problem would occur when the humidity is 90% or higher.
Through such twists and turns Epson, which had captured the top market share from Canon with thesuccess of the MJ-700V2C, saw its share slip once more. Epson ultimately regained its reputation inJune 1996, when it improved the magenta ink and introduced the MJ-810C, which once again usedhigh-permeation ink for its monochrome ink.
There was still another issue that had to be conquered in order to achieve photographic image quality,
however. Faithful reproduction of the colors and gradations of the original image, and elimination of the“granular quality” of the ink dots, are indispensable for high-quality pictures (for information concerning
the method of reproducing the original image, see Reference II at the end of this manuscript). To achievethese Epson opted for “six color ink” and the use of “microdots” that reduced the quantity of ink in the ink
droplets.
Around this time Epson increased the ink coloring materials for better permeation on plain paper andimproved ink consistency. This resulted in problems when using special papers, however, giving the dotsa grainy appearance. For cyan and magenta, two of the three main colors (along with yellow), the dots
could be easily checked visually as grains, and Epson therefore developed inks such as light cyan andlight magenta, which reduced the amount of color materials to one-quarter of that traditionally employed.
With the use of as many as six colors made from combining five color inks and monochrome ink, thepicture processing algorithm also becomes more complex. When it marketed the MJ-700V2C, Epson
had installed image processing software purchased from an outside firm, but later the Printer Design
Department had begun development of a proprietary half-tone algorithm. Fortunately, even though thetypes of inks had been increased from four to six colors, very few changes to the print head mechanism
were required. Therefore by putting its resources into picture processing development, Epson succeededin proprietary development of an imaging algorithm that enabled high-speed error diffusion for six colors.
Moreover, an algorithm to adjust the voltage applied to the piezoelectric element was also developed
during this period. With IJ technology, binary processing to simply eject or not eject ink was being used.
In addition to this simple ink ejection-no ejection choice, a meniscus control algorithm to adjust the ink
droplet volume in terms of “how much” ink to eject was developed. As a result, Epson succeeded in
producing microdots that reduced the amount of ink in each ink droplet from 40pl traditionally to 13pl,
making it possible to control ink droplets in three phases for large, medium and small. By increasing thenumber of dots per area, the achievement of microdots not only eliminated grainy appearance, it added
to the number of color tones, which also proved indispensable for photographic image quality.
Furthermore, to avoid the lines and streaks known as “banding” that can appear in an image, thedevelopment team decided to adopt a method referred to as “microwaves.” To achieve microwaves, thepaper feed must occur in minute movements. The development team decided to install a motor to feed
paper at a rate of 1/720 of an inch. When printing at a high resolution of 720dpi, however, the print speed
would slow to a crawl, and printing an A4 size photograph would require as long as one hour. Despite
such a sacrifice of efficiency, the development team opted to keep achievement of photographic image
quality its foremost priority.
29

In addition to ink, Otawari was in charge of special paper development. A “photograph” is somethingthat is printed on glossy paper. Traditional special papers were coated with silica as an ink absorbent,
which gives images a white tinge. To make this transparent, the paper should be coated with alumina sol
whose granules are smaller than the silica particles. Consequently Epson and another company jointly
developed a coating technology using granular alumina sol, and introduced a glossy paper under thename “Kotaku Film” when it launched sales of the MJ-800C described above.
Through the development of these related technologies, the PM-700C was put on the market in
October 1996. The letters “PM,” an abbreviation for “Photo MACH,” were adopted in the product name tolink the printer in buyers’ minds to the fact the image quality equaled that of photographs. The PM-700C
achieved overwhelming high-resolution at a low price of 59,800 yen. The product was highly successful,garnering a market share of about 25% within one year.
With the subsequent introduction in April 1997 of the PM-750C, which was billed as achieving a highresolution of 1,440dpi, close to the limit of visual confirmation, Epson’s printers jumped in popularity evenin other countries, and Epson finally pulled ahead of Canon in terms of market share.
From this time forward Epson also continued to improve its paper, including the joint development oftechnology to apply silica in the same manner as photographic printing papers, in order to lower the priceof its expensive, 200 yen per sheet glossy printing paper. It also negotiated with the Ministry of Posts andTelecommunications and reached an agreement on the sale of New Year’s greeting postcards for use
with IJ printers20. As a result of developing a promotion using a pack of three New Year greeting
postcards for IJ printers, awareness of the post office postcards for inkjet printer use jumped in thefollowing year and they proved so popular they sold out. Today the 2.2 billion IJ postcards sold each year
account for about 60% of all New Year greeting postcards, and producing your own color New Year’s
cards has become a regular activity for IJ printer users.
6. Lateral Development of IJ Technology
Epson has developed its IJ technology around printers for home use. Today printers for home use
remain Epson’s largest business. The market for IJ printers for home use, however, is already mature.
Epson’s net sales of printers in fiscal 2007 are projected to be 778.0 billion yen, down slightly from 781.5
billion yen in fiscal 2006. With sales leveling out or declining slightly, large growth cannot be anticipated in
the future.
In addition, like other home electrical appliances and electronics products, printers for home use areexposed to stiff price competition. The business model of earning profits from consumables makes it
possible to lower the prices of printers themselves, but leads to a structure in which the higher the salesof printers, the greater the downward pressure on earnings. If a printer manufacturer does not increase
sales of its printers, however, it will be unable to maintain its consumables business for the long term.
Saddled with such a dilemma, the home printer business remains a difficult one.
In Epson’s case in particular, earnings are highly susceptible to the effects of any deterioration in sales
because sales of printers for home use account for 60% of the company’s entire printer business. In
20

Because the main devices used by individuals at the end of 1997 to produce their own color New Year’s cards wereprinters such as “Print Gokko”, only 10 million New Year’s greeting postcards for use with IJ printers were prepared. At therequest of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, the designation “inkjet” could not be used and the postcards were
initially sold under the name “coated postcards.” As a result, some customers also used the postcards with laser printers,
which led to claims because of problems such as the postcard coating melting and coiling around the thermal drum, causing
printers to breakdown. Approval to use the designation “inkjet” was subsequently granted.

30

contrast, sales of business printers exceed 70% of all printer sales at rival Canon, which is believed tomake it easier for Canon to manage a more stable business21.
To address these circumstances, more recently Epson has been focusing its efforts on IJ technology
for uses other than printers for home use. Such lateral development extends to three sectors: (1)business printers, (2) textile printers and (3) manufacturing devices for industrial use.
6.1 Sectors applying IJ technology
Business printers are technically similar to printers for household use in that they eject ink onto paper.
The business models of the two businesses differ, however. In the case of printers for household use,
Epson provides their final products to end customers, but in the case of printers for businesses, it
frequently is in the position of supplying printer heads and inks as a materials firm. For example, Epson
supplies inks and heads as a set for photo product minilab printers from Noritsu Koki Co., Ltd., sign
(advertising) graphics printers from Roland DG Corporation, Mimaki Engineering Co., Ltd. and Musashi
Kogyo Co., Ltd., and digital printers from Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co., Ltd.22. In these cases, the Epson
brand is not displayed on the final product even though Epson supplies the the core technology.
In addition, from about 1996 Epson began activities to increase the awareness of applications of its IJ
technology, and in September 2006 created a special website and began soliciting partner firms thatwould adopt Epson’s IJ technology. Behind that decision is thought to be the consideration that there is alimit to how much Epson can develop on its own markets that can apply IJ technology. Moreover,because a close relationship with end customers is critical in the business market, luring customers awayfrom existing firms is difficult. Epson therefore opted for the approach of supplying its IJ technology in theform of a core component and entrusting its customers with market cultivation.
This does not mean that Epson’s activities aimed at the business market consisted only of supplying
print heads and ink, however. It introduced MaxArt as a large-scale printer for posters. It also introduced
CRYSATARIO as a printer for photographic minilabs, and marketed the GP-700, a printer characterized
by excellent durability, for retail store back offices. In 2007 Epson also developed a printer for labels
affixed to food containers and similar packaging. As this illustrates, in its printer operation for businesses,
Epson targeted both the components and the end products markets.
Another sector into which Epson directed its efforts was textile printers, which eject ink onto media
such as cloth rather than paper. Although Epson had been providing IJ technology for printing on fabrics
since the latter half of the 1990s, this application began spreading to mass production equipment in 2003
when Epson licensed its technology to F. Lli Robustelli S.r.l., a textile printer manufacturer in Italy’s Como
Province. In this case as well, Epson based its business not on final products but on supply of thecomponents. Epson supplies Robustelli with IJ heads for that company’s printers. The inks developed forthe specialized print heads are supplied through FOR.TEX S.r.l., which is also based in Como23. The
Como area is Italy’s pre-eminent apparel region and produces many world-famous brands. This region,
which can rightly be called the supply base of Italian fashion, is brimming with textile printers that utilize
Epson’s IJ technology nowadays.
Besides printers for graphics such as those discussed above, IJ technology has been spread toapplications in a variety of industrial uses. One use that has already been commercialized is devices forthe manufacture of liquid crystal display color filters. Color filters typically are manufactured by spreading
21

Fuji Sankei Business, January 15, 2007, page 7.
The Chemical Daily, September 27, 2006, page 8.
23
The Chemical Daily, May 28, 2003, page 10.
2231

a color resist containing pigments on the substrate and forming the pattern using a photolithographymachine. The rising cost of equipment to produce larger display sizes and the negative environmental
impact of discarded materials, however, have become problems with this method. IJ technology hasrisen to dominance on these points in recent years. The IJ equipment that Epson developed in 2006 to
support 8th-generation large-scale liquid crystal substrates is already in operation at Sharp’s Kameyama
Plant No. 2. Moreover, in addition to technology for color filter manufacturing, Epson has developed
technology to form circuits on substrates by expelling ink containing metal micro-particles, which is
expected to replace the exposure and etching process using photoresist.
Applying IJ technology to various uses such as business printers, textile printers and industry
manufacturing requires the technology to propel various liquids. Therefore the development of “how will it
be ejected?” is as important as development of “what will be ejected?” In Epson’s IJ technology, liquids
are ejected by physical deformation of the piezoelectric element. Various liquids can be ejected because
a load never placed on the propelled liquid. Consequently the technology is considered to be in a moreadvantageous position than Bubble Jet from the standpoint of undertaking the development of various
applications.
IJ technology achieves the highly general function of ejecting liquids. The question of which sectors
this technology will be applied to in the future is an important strategic issue for Epson’s growth. Hanaoka,
who is now Epson’s president, discussed the future strategic development of the IJ business as follows
while employing the metaphor “from Mt. Fuji to Yatsugatake.”
Until now consumer printers have been like climbing Mt. Fuji. The market was very clear
and also quite large. [...] Looking ahead, there’s doubt about whether there will be anothermountain as big. Rather you might say there will be several mountains, none of which is a
Mt. Fuji, that we’ll see based on a common technology platform in the future. I say that
because, if we’re talking about the IJ technology we have now, I think it’s a pretty good basefor making mountains like Yatsugatake. So on that point the question is how to take thebusiness into different fields while using our current IJ technology. So Epson’s stance in the
future will be to establish several (businesses), because it will be OK even if they aren’t thatlarge24.
Moreover, Epson is groping for developments that will position its IJ technology within new businessmodels that are created as digitalization advances. For example, in January 2006 Epson developed an IJ
printer in cooperation with Catalina Marketing Corporation in the United States to support point of sales
systems for large-scale retail stores. This system instantaneously analyzes a product a customer has
purchased and prints a discount coupon corresponding to it, so that a customer who bought Coca-Cola,for example, is provided with a discount coupon for Pepsi Cola, and has been installed in about 12,000
stores in the United States25. Hanaoka spoke about this approach as follows.
[...] It’s very interesting how a certain business model and our technology in our printers canbe joined. [...] Replacing a traditional business model with technology isn’t interesting, buthere the business model itself was changed through the addition of our products. If our
product isn’t added there, it’s not interesting. [...] Take the example of textile printing – when
24
25

Taken from the interview with Hanaoka described above.
Management Newsline (Seiko Epson), No. 15, April 2007.

32

this becomes a business model where the middleman isn’t needed as long as there is a
designer and shops, that’s a completely different business model, you see. So we’ll put our
products into such business models. This is the type of approach we’ll take.

7. Conclusion
Although there is an IJ printer business today that supports Epson, it was certainly not the case thatsuch growth had been envisaged from the start of development. When Epson began its development, IJ
technology was just one among several technologies. Since the 1970s, Epson has been involved in thedevelopment of every printer technology. This includes technologies that were commercialized but did
not achieve successful results from a business standpoint. It also includes technologies that were notcommercialized. Through such trial and error, the superiority of IJ technology was gradually clarified.
IJ technology was also turned gradually to practical applications through patient trial and error. The
first printer had frequent problems. The HG head cost was difficult to reduce. Realization of the MACH
head looked questionable. And surpassing the bubble jet in terms of nozzle density and cost was noteasy. By sketching out a future ideal, however, and working toward it by solving problems gradually,
based on the piezo method’s fundamental advantages in propelling ink by physical deformation and thebelief that cost and performance could both be achieved if a thin piezo element could be created,
Epson’s current IJ technology was established. Hanaoka put it this way.
When design engineers make a difficult request, it’s really a matter of approaching the ideal
gradually [...] over some period of time. That’s apart from the question whether it can bedone today, or whether it will be possible to do tomorrow. So of course, how to make [...]
something that’s difficult might very well be hard, yet once you’ve been able to do it, theproduct’s appeal increases tremendously. Well, that’s the benefit of continuing to plug away
at something, I suppose, and I think that maybe, since that time, everyone has eventually
come to see it that way.

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Appendix I：Types of Printers26
Printers are classified into several types depending on the volume printed at one time and the printing
method.
Based on volume printed at one time, devices are classified into three types: page printers, line
printers and serial printers.
Page printers use a method of printing an entire page, at one time by summarizing the print data forone page, consisting of the characters and images, and calculating where to arrange the data on the
page. While this method is often adopted for printers that utilize the electrophotographic method
described below, it is sometimes also adopted for inkjet (IJ) printers and thermal transfer method printers.
In contrast to this method, line printers and serial printers use a method of sequentially printing eachindividual line or each individual character.
Based on the printing method, printers can also be classified into impact method and non-impact
method printers.
The impact method refers to a method of printing by having the print head strike (impact) a recording
medium such as paper; this method can be further divided between typing methods that print charactersby typing them on paper, and the dot impact method, which breaks down characters into dots within asquare-shape and prints them using wire pins that strike a ribbon according to the combination of dotsthat form the character’s shape. Both methods are indispensable as business office equipment because
they can be used with plain paper and can be used especially for printing multi-sheet pay slips that use
carbon paper. They are quite loud when printing, on the other hand, and therefore inferior in terms ofoperating noise.
Non-impact methods include, in addition to the IJ method, methods such as thermal printing andelectrophotographic printing. The two thermal methods are thermal transfer printing and direct thermal
printing. Of these, the thermal transfer method transfers images to the recording medium by heating, withthe thermal print head, dry ink that liquefies or sublimates under heat; these are referred to as the hot
melt thermal transfer method and the dye-sublimation thermal transfer method, respectively. The direct
thermal method, on the other hand, uses special paper with a coloring layer, and forms images bydirectly heating the paper using the thermal print head to cause the paper to produce colors. The
electrophotographic method is a printing method used in plain paper copiers. Printing is accomplished byapplying light to a drum using a laser or LED (light emitting diode) to make a latent image using thecharge and causing powdered toner to be absorbed by the charged area, then transferring the toner topaper.

26

The descriptions in this section are based on the August 30, 1993 issue of Nikkei Personal Computing, the August 22,
1994 issue of Nikkei Electronics and the December 8, 1997 issue of Nikkei Computer.

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References“Developments that are Expected to Revive Color Inkjet Printers,” lecture by Minoru Usui at Institute of
Innovation Research, Hitotsubashi University, January 26, 2007.
Fujiwara Masatoshi (2002) “Business Case Study: Seiko Epson’s Technical Strategy for its PrinterBusiness (in Japanese).” Hitotsubashi Business Review, Vol.50, No. 3.
– – –. (2004) “Strategic Adaptations of Technology” (In Japanese).” Itami Hiroyuki and Nishino Kazumi,
eds., Casebook: Logic of Corporate Strategy, Nihon Keizai Shimbun Inc.
The Chemical Daily “Seiko Epson Licenses Ink-jet Technology to Italian Textile Printing Firm” (InJapanese), May 28, 2003.
– – –. “Seiko Epson Seeks Partners to Strengthen IJ Devices (In Japanese), September 27, 2006.
Nikkei Electronics “Ask Invention Award Winners Their Patent Application Secrets (In Japanese)”,
August 22, 1994 issue.
– – –. “Development Story: Development of the Colorio PM-700C (In Japanese).”, February 14, 2000
issue and May 8, 2000 issue.
Nikkei Computer, “Introductory Course: Basic Principles of Color Printers (In Japanese).” December 8,1997 issue.
Nikkei Mechanical, “Breakthrough: Seiko Epson’s Inkjet Printer (In Japanese).” June 14, 1993 issue.
Nikkei Personal Computer “Special Feature: Introductory Guide to Buy Printers in Windows Era (InJapanese).” August 30, 1993 issue.
– – –. “Editor-in-Chief Interview: No Limits on Faster Speeds for Inkjet Printers (In Japanese).” March
10, 2008 issue.
Nikkei Byte “Under The Hood: INKJET PRINTER Two Broad Methods for Dividing the Inkjet PrinterMarket: Accomplishing Evolution to Take Advantage of Unique Characteristics (In Japanese).”November 22, 2003 issue.
Fuji Sankei Business “Gambit for Tomorrow: Seiko Epson (1) Inkjet Strategy (In Japanese).” January 15,
2007.
Management Newsline (Seiko Epson) “To the Next Growth Stage: Turning Epson’s Proprietary ‘Micro
Piezo Technology’ into the Driving Force to Take Us Forward (In Japanese).”No. 15, April 2007.

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