Researchers have developed a semiconducting ink, that consists of carbon nanotubes capable of holding electrical charge. This ultimately means that small circuits could be printed straight onto… well anything I suppose. These electronic circuits could be implemented on products in shops to allow wireless walk-through checkouts. This idea is not a new one at all and is called RFID checkout, it is all ready used in a couple of stores throughout the world, but you may be able to see it being used more often now its cheap enough to be used.
Solar power has been a feasible alternative energy source for a while now, but it seems that a cost is one of the problems with this energy source. Well Nanosolar have developed a printing process that is far faster than high-vacuum deposition that is conventionally used to create solar panels, and effectively have reduced the cost and improved the effectiveness of manufacturing solar panels. Here is a video of their printing proccess in action:
Ink cartridges seem to be just another one of those everyday products that in some cases people dred buying, mainly because of the cost. But what alot of people don’t realise, including myself until I got into the printer business, is that printers aren’t just used for printing some work document anymore. As you’ll be able to see in some of the previous blog posts, printers are evolving into devices that you can carry around in your pocket, into 3D printers capable of printing whatever you please, bio-printers that use cells to build new organs, and much more.
But what about the ink itself? OK it’s true that most of the devices above don’t use ink, but when looking at the everyday printer, the ink it uses has pretty much stayed the same. Maybe it’s time to invent something new and exiting and of course more Eco-friendly. Well there are actually many types of ink out there apart from your everyday HP ink.
For example, have you ever heard of edible printer ink? No? Well there are many sites on the web selling just that. Ink cartridges for your printer filled with edible ink. They are used for printing onto icing sheets for cakes, etc. Just pop a edible ink cartridge into your printer and a sheet of icing paper into the paper tray and print away.
Another interesting example is actually glow in the dark printer ink. I havn’t been able to find any pre-filled glow in the dark cartridges, but below is a video showing how to make one yourself. Imagine the wonders you could print using glow in the dark ink!
This excellent advertisement was made by Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth in response to a D&AD Student Awards brief set by HP. The video was made with the concept of “Presenting an idea which promotes HP Workstations ability to bring to life anything the creative mind can conceive” and does indeed portray that idea.
Here’s a great bit of advertising from Samsung, they have recreated one of their printers using a stach of paper. The great thing is that only the top page of the stack is printed on fully, the rest of the sheets have only been printed on the edge of the paper. This meens the other sheets are still useable. I’m guessing that the sheets of paper are made to represent the “Imagine long lasting. 100.000 prints per month” slogan.
Here we have another concept eco-printer, the REENK by Hyo Sun Ahn & Min Koung So. Similar to the Pencil lead printer, the REENK uses the leftover ink from ballpoint pens after they stop working. The only flaws I can see with this design is that you would probably have to buy specific CMYK pens that would probably be more expensive than your avarage ballpoint pen, and when have you ever used a yellow pen? The concept is still a great one though.
Here’s a bit of an odd one, but cool none the less. The Cornucopia is a concept design for a personal food factory, sort of a 3D printer that prints food.
Made by Marcelo Coelho and Amit Zoran the cornucopia uses an array of food canisters that individually store and refigirate the ‘cooks’ chosen ingredients. Then these ingredients are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food. The food is then heated or cooled by Cornucopia’s chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but it also allows the user to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.
Its seems like something from star-trek, but it would be great if they start making these things for real.
Here is a video of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, an Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer, a HP Scanjet 3c and an array of Hard Drives playing Big Ideas: Don’t get any a version of a song by Radiohead. The video is made by James Houston and It’s amazing what people are able to do with pieces of old hardware and a bit (maybe a lot) of time. This video is also a great example of imaginative recycling, even if it’s not the most useful of employments.
Enrico Dini from Pisa in Italy has decided to build whole buildings using sand or even moon-dust. His 3D printer like machine, The D-Shape, sprays a thin layer of sand with a magnesium-based glue from hundreds of nozzles. The glue binds the sands into a solid rock like material, that layer after layer can build up creating anything from furniture to sculptures and hopefully someday full buildings. According to the creator, the d-shape process is four times faster than conventional building, costs a third to a half as much as using Portland cement, creates little waste and is better for the environment.
But Dini has bigger plans than just building houses here on earth. He’s talking with La Scuola Normale Superiore, Alta Space, and Norman Foster to modify D-Shape to build with moon dust. This would make moon-bases much more plausible.
