XAAR 502 Series

The Xaar 502 is Xaar’s 500-nozzle oil-based printhead family, built on the PrecisionPlus® architecture that followed the Hybrid Side Shooter® design. Each head fires 15–75 pL variable drops across up to 6 greyscale levels from a single row of 500 nozzles at 180 npi, over a 70.5 mm print swathe with a 141.1 µm nozzle pitch. PrecisionPlus flips the PZT support onto its edge so the assembly gains stiffness in the Z axis — drop formation therefore stays uniform from the first nozzle to the last, which is what lets several 502 heads sit side by side in one print bar with minimal variation between them. The family shares a C&M (coding & marking) nozzle guard set flush to the actuator sides, a last-chance inlet filter, a vacuum (gravity) fed ink path with 4 mm hose barb connections, and a slim 104 × 17 × 113 mm, 208 g body. Typical firing frequency at maximum drop placement demand is 7.2 kHz with a 7 m/s drop velocity, and each nozzle can fire a single binary 15 pL drop or a merged 45, 60 or 75 pL dot — six grey levels from one waveform. Internal temperature management holds viscosity steady as ambient conditions change.
Two variants cover the family, and the difference matters when you order. The Xaar 502 GS15 O (XP50200002) runs on a simple gravity-fed or vacuum-controlled ink supply and supports TF Technology® in Pulsed mode — ink is recirculated while the head is not jetting, which clears air bubbles, lets nozzles self-recover and extends maintenance cycles at minimum complexity and cost. The Xaar 502 GS15 OR (XP50200003) adds High Flow TF Technology for inks and glazes that need continuous high-speed flow past the nozzles. Both are oil-based heads, so choose a Xaar 1003 or another family if your production runs UV, solvent or aqueous inks. Applications run from large-format exterior banners and indoor point-of-sale graphics to secondary and primary packaging coding, barcodes, QR codes, batch numbers and expiry dates. Existing Xaar 500/80 (Proton 35 pL) users can migrate with an ICM module carrying a Xaar waveform plus a small ink-system change, because the 500 had four ink feeds where the 502 has one. Tell us your printer model and ink set and we will confirm the exact part before you order.