Iris printer

An Iris printer is a large-format color inkjet printer introduced in 1985 by Iris Graphics, originally of Stoneham, Massachusetts and currently manufactured by the Graphic Communications Group of Eastman Kodak, designed for prepress proofing. It is also used in the fine art reproduction market as a final output digital printing press, as in Giclée.

Prints produced by an Iris printer are commonly called Iris prints, Iris proofs or simply Irises.

The Iris printer was originally developed by Iris Graphics, Inc. originally of Stoneham, Massachusetts, and first shipped in 1985 in the large format 2044 version. The smaller Model 3024 was introduced at the September 1987 "Lasers in Graphics" show in Miami. The company was acquired by Scitex in 1990, which was then purchased by Creo Products Inc. in 2000. In 2005, Creo was purchased by Kodak. The Iris product line evolved into the Veris printer line.

The Iris printer is an inkjet printer designed to interface with digital prepress systems to produce a hard copy that shows what the exact image will look like before the job goes to press. Such prepress output devices are used to check the image and for critical color match on industrial printing jobs such as commercial product packaging and magazine layout. Their output is also used to check color after mass production begins. Iris printers use a continuous flow ink system to produce continuous-tone dot free output. The paper used in the machine is mounted on a drum rotating at 150 inches per second. Unlike most ink jet printers which fire drops only when needed, the IRIS printer's four 1-micrometer glass jets operate continuously under high pressure, vibrated by a piezoelectric crystal to produce drops at a 1 MHz rate. The droplets are given an electric charge so that the ones that are not needed to form the image are deflected electrostatically into a waste system.

...
Wikipedia