A "New And Improved" Spray-On Cancel?

Although it's rather a pity that this spray-on cancel was applied to a USPS envelope with no stamp, I thought this example was particularly interesting as it is just about the cleanest specimen of a spray-on cancel that I can recall seeing in recent memory. Could it be new equipment? Maybe just a new ink cartridge? Or could it be that new and better imaging equipment is being installed for a clearer postmark?



Compare this example to a typical spray-on cancel and you'll see this spray-on uses double lined dots to form the various letters (although for whatever reason the first and last letters in the city name do not seem to follow that observation). Also note that the "killer bars" use a formation of very short vertical lines, which also seems a bit different from the norm.

Am I just flyspecking this or have others seen this "new" type of spray-on cancel coming into use recently?

In looking at the printing could the USPS finally be getting smart and printing the cancel with the same machinery as the bar code at the bottom? Basically changing a 2 step process into a one step process?

wt1, I haven't seen any, but will definitely keep my eyes open for them. It would be great if this improvement is here to stay!