Technabob » printer

The Arc Printer Makes Printing at the Office a More Social Experience

Hazel Chua — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:00:35 +0000

Everyone’s lining up to get the stuff they had printed out at the lone, office printer. As the line grows longer, the people start to get crankier. And before you know it, someone’s picking a fight from someone who belongs in another department.

With this in mind, René Lee set off to work on designing a revolutionary printer with the busy office in mind. After spending a lot of time doing research and drawing up initial designs, Lee came up with the Arc Printer.

It’s basically a round printer that stacks printouts from different documents accordingly in a circle. Users can just walk up to the printer, find their stack, have a quick chat or say hello to the others who are also grabbing their documents, and go.

With this design, Lee has managed to transform the printer “from a heavy utilitarian equipment into something more elegant and emotional.”

I’d definitely love to see one of these at my office.

[via Utilitarian Things]

Little Printer Prints Your Personal Daily Newspaper

Conner Flynn — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:30:37 +0000

Berg has unveiled a tiny “inkless” printer for your mobile needs designed to help you print out simple content. Stuff like news, pictures, puzzles, gossip from your friends, smiley faces, and more.

When you push the button on top of the Little Printer, the printer gathers up all the information that it has received and prints it out into a kind of tiny personal newspaper.

You’ll set up your personal preferences and subscriptions on a companion app for your smartphone.

I thought we were shunning paper in favor of Kindles and the like, I guess now we like it again.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

This is the first in a planned family of products that will be called Berg Cloud. Each will wirelessly connect to a box that plugs into your router, and they can communicate with other web-enabled services. Just configure them all with your phone.

The Tiny Printer will be available sometime in 2012, for an unknown price. If you’re interested in one, you can sign up for their e-mail list now.

[via Wired]

Hanging Printer Clears Up Your Desk, Prints Stuff Out Vertically

Hazel Chua — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:30:50 +0000

I recently replaced my old inkjet printer with one of those 3-in-1 printer, scanner, and copier combos, and I have to agree that it’s definitely a huge space saver. My desk used to be so cluttered with stuff piled on top of the other because my printer and scanner took up so much space.

A lot of other people probably share the same sentiments when it comes to these noticeably bulky gadgets. A smart solution? Just hang it up. Your printer, that is.

The I’m Hanging Printer is a concept design by Marc JuHyun Cha. Instead of setting it down on the table, why not hang your printer on some empty space in the wall? It saves space and looks pretty modern and futuristic, so it won’t look too weird or out there on your office wall.

Of course, make sure to never hang the printer in an area where there’s a lot of traffic, because you don’t want people bumping into (or getting hit) by your printer when they walk past your desk. I don’t think it’s recommended for areas that are earthquake-prone though, due to obvious reasons.

The Hanging Printer is an entry in the 2011 iF concept design forum.

[via Yanko Design]

Toilet Paper Printer, Surprisingly Not Called a Wipe-jet

Conner Flynn — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 20:00:12 +0000

Mario Lukas apparently likes to read his memos on toilet paper, since he created this printer that uses toilet paper rolls instead of traditional A4 sheets. Lukas created this TP printer as an entry in a hardware hacking contest called “Mach flott den Schrott” that was being held by German technology magazine c’t.

It’s made with old printer parts and Lukas even gave it an Ethernet port so that he can control what he prints. He designed it mostly to print Tweets and Facebook posts(the content of which is usually suited to just this type of paper) but it can also print RSS feeds. Need to add more paper? Just head down to the local store and buy an 8 pack of TP. Put half away for yourself and half away for the printer, then open the side of the printer and put it in.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Pretty cool. If only it could print it and put it back on a tube. Then you could print your own custom toilet paper and sell rolls.

[Toilet Paper Printer (DE) via Make:]

See What You Print Concept: Tablet + Inkjet Printer

Range — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:00:22 +0000

Design company Artefact felt like the printer needed to evolve, which is why they came up with their SWYP concept. The See What You Print machine will feature a paper-sized touchscreen on its top surface, allowing the user to interact with it instead of doing so on the computer.

Rather than working on a computer to modify your images, you’d tap directly on the SWYP’s tablet-like touchscreen surface to edit and prepare images, which would then print out directly underneath, exactly as you saw them on screen.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The designers of the SWYP say the screen would be calibrated to match the print output, and match the exact size of the paper so you get exactly what you see on screen.

The idea makes sense if you send photos to it directly from your smartphone or camera, but not so much if you do your image prep work on your computer.

The overall design is interesting, but will it be relevant to users? I mean, how many photos do you actually print out? I take hundreds of photos and rarely print them out at all. When I do, I go to a shop that prints out large archival quality prints. My current desktop printers have all run out of ink and I haven’t replaced them in a while.

[via core77]

Norwegian Design Studio Prints Pic of Your Dead Pet Using Their Ashes… Seriously

Shane McGlaun — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:25:31 +0000

Some people take their pets very seriously. For instance, this little old lady down the street walks her dog and talks to it like a person. Generally, she’s telling the dog to hurry as it drops a deuce in my yard. I can understand that people can be very attached to pets.

What I won’t go for without mocking anyone that does it openly is take the dead pet ashes and then send them to Norway for the Skrekkøgle design house to mix into some sort of ink for a printer. The printer is then used to print out a photo of your pet using its own ashes. Exactly how they mix in the ashes is unknown.

The prints look sort of like pencil drawings to me. I can’t really get over how gross printing a picture with the ashes of Mr. Snookums would be. You need to send an email to the Skrekkøgle people if you want to get your photo printed and see how much it costs.

[via PopPhoto]

DIY Camera Geek Makes His Own “Instant” Camera

Shane McGlaun — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:00:14 +0000

Instant cameras should be instant, right? When you say instant camera I always think of the old Polaroids that would spit the picture out the front for you and you had to set it aside to let it finish developing. That usually took a few minutes before your picture was done. Now, a dude named Niklas Roy has created his own instant camera, only it’s not quite instant.

The picture doesn’t come shooting out the front of Roy’s creation as soon as you hit the shutter. His camera prints the photo line-by-line, and takes three minutes to finish. To make the wait even more agonizing, the camera has no memory, so the subject has to stand still for three minutes for the shot to work. Three minutes is an eternity when you have to be still.

The camera was made using an old black-and-white video camera. The camera is attached via an ATmega8 microcontroller to a dot-matrix roll printer like you would normally find printing receipts at the store. The prints are then output onto the cheap receipt paper.

It’s a cool concept and all, but give the thing some storage and I’ll like it better.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via Make: via Petapixel]

3D Printer Creates Chocolate in Any Shape

Shane McGlaun — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:00:03 +0000

I really like chocolate,and so do my kids. They eat more of it than I do, but I like to sneak me a bit every now and then, as the crumbs in my keyboard can attest. I talked about the Solar Sinter 3D printer a while back that made things out of desert sand. This 3D printer is much more interesting because rather than sand, it uses yummy chocolate to print.

The 3D chocolate printer was funded with a grant and designed by Dr. Liang Hao at the University of Exeter in partnership with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). He says that he chose chocolate because it’s cheap, easily malleable, and yields no waste. The cool part about an experiment on this thing is that you can eat whatever is left over or melt it down. Try that with sand.

The printer is envisioned to be used to allow people to place an order online and upload a digital design to be made into chocolate. Hao does say that the printer could easily be adapted to use other materials as well for printing jewelry and more.

[via inhabitat]

Go Receipt Racer, Go!

Technabob — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 21:52:04 +0000

Back in the early days of arcade games, I always enjoyed those early top-down racing and skiing games with the jaggy pixelated course that you had to steer through. Now a few 21st century geeks have come up with their own take on the classic arcade racing genre with Receipt Racer.

The game uses a dot-matrix receipt printer, hacked to continuously print out a road, while a player uses a controller to keep a light beam (representing the car) in the center of the course. One wrong move, and the printer stops. Of course if you run out of the 50-meter roll of paper, it’s Game Over too.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Joshua Noble, Martin Fuchs, and Philip Whitfield (aka “undef”) built the game as part of the CreativeApplications.Net workshop at Barcelona’s digital culture OFFF festival. There’s a web-based version of the game over at undef’s website, but it’s not nearly as cool as the printer-based version in the video above. Of course, the game does seem just a little wasteful, with all the paper and ink that it consumes. I wonder what other games could be reproduced this way – pretty much any top-down or side-scroller with obstacles could work

[via Nerdcore via Neatorama]

The Sophie Concept: An iPhone Case That Doubles As a Polaroid Printer

Hazel Chua — Fri, 06 May 2011 23:41:48 +0000

Will these conceptual wonders never cease? Designer Mac Funamizu has come up with a lot of designs in the past, but his latest called “Sophie” is truly something.

What do you think about an iPhone case that also functions as a Polaroid printer?

Michael, a commenter on Yanko Design has suggested that a real prototype of a Polaroid printer in the guise of an iPhone case isn’t that far off. He remarks that Polaroid has actually been looking into this type of technology with the use of some specialized paper but encountered issues as to how much paper a small, printer could hold or how it can be reloaded.

Anyhow, I still think that it’s a pretty cool concept and would love to see companies give this concept design a whirl.

[via Yanko Design]

Invisible Ink Printer Hack: Way Too Much Work For Something You Can’t See

Technabob — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 02:45:11 +0000

If you ever wanted to send secret messages using your computer, you could just embed secret messages in your image files. But if you want to print out hidden messages, you can hack your inkjet printer to print invisible messages.

The guys over at Make: put together this hack where you crack open the cartridge from your inkhet printer and replace they yellow ink with lemon juice. Print anything you want in yellow, and the page looks blank. But apply some iodine or heat the page with an iron, and your secret message will be revealed. Check out the overly complex and sloppy process in the video below:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

It’s a huge pain in the ass, and looks really messy, but the results are kind of cool. Of course, you could do the same with just some lemon juice and a paintbrush or Q-Tip, but what fun would that be. This is way more geeky.

You can grab the full instructions from Make: here [PDF file].

Post-It Printer Concept: If You’re Forgetful and Lazy

Lambert Varias — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 12:29:10 +0000

…or if like me you have bad handwriting. Dongyeon Kim’s Take-it Post-it Printer concept syncs with both PCs and mobile devices and would print on Post-it sticky Notes. It also doubles as a container for Post-it Notes, so you can still tear off a piece and write a note manually.

It would be nice if you could program the device to print notes at preset times and dates so you won’t even have to remember to make notes. Unless of course you make a note to remind yourself to make a note.

[via Yanko Design]

SMS Printers: For Recipients Only

Lambert Varias — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 12:51:09 +0000

Here’s an interesting device I never knew existed until today – a portable device that prints text messages on small strips of paper. It seems like they’ve been around for a year now, and have found both commercial and personal applications. They can be used to receive food orders for instance, send messages to the other end of a warehouse, or as a means of communicating with the elderly.

These printers I found are made by SMS2Printer. Unfortunately I don’t have a video of either of them in action, but I did find a clip of a similar-looking device on YouTube. The Maestro model, pictured below, has additional buttons that allow it to send a “response” to whoever sends a text message. I’m pretty sure the reply can be edited, although I don’t have the specifics. SMS Printer also says that their devices can be fitted with an emergency button that will allow the user to send a text message to a pre-set number to ask for help.

If you ask me, I’d still rather teach the elderly to use a phone rather than restrict them to this device, but I do see how this can be useful for businesses and even governments. If all your employees need to perform their job is to receive messages, then this could be a cheap solution. It would have to be cheaper than most cellphones though, including dumbphones. Otherwise, it becomes too much of a compromise.

Check out SMS2Printer’s website for more info.

[via Home Toys]

DIY 3D Printer: Straight Out of Science Fiction Into Your Basement

Range — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 17:37:54 +0000

Amazingly, this beautiful 3D printer was built by some guy named Jim in New York. Just like normal printers, 3D printers allow you to print stuff but in 3D. No glasses required! Although this seems straight out of science fiction, the technology has been used since 2003 in the manufacturing segment.

This reminds me of the book Makers by Cory Doctorow, where a Maker revolution was started using 3D printers. I don’t know much about how he made it, but it’s pretty cool that he was able to cobble together this good-looking machine, DIY-style.

It took Jim about 2 years to complete this 3D printer, which he actually designed himself as well. It’s been operational since this summer. Check out more photos and a full description here.

[via Make:]

Tableau: Magic Messenger Drawer

Lambert Varias — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:56:48 +0000

From the same guy that cooked up the Proverbial Wallets comes a magical drawer that can transport messages to and from the Internet. John Kestner calls his creation the Tableau, and like the Proverbial Wallets, it adds a physical factor to digital processes. To “send” a message or object, all you have to do is place it inside the drawer; likewise if you receive something from the Internet, check the drawer and it’ll be there for you. It’s a magic!

Or not. Actually the Tableau hides a scanner and a printer; the former is used to digitize what you want to send, and the latter prints what you receive.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

If the Tableau was real, I imagine it would be quite tedious to use it. Also if you receive a lot of stuff, you’ll run out of ink before you know it. Still, the concept is quite charming and magical. I can imagine myself sending secret messages from one Tableau to another. It kind of reminds me of the inter-universe typewriter in Fringe. Check out Kestner’s website for more info.

Researchers Develop Printer That Prints Skin

Shane McGlaun — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:56:24 +0000

I once knew a guy that had been in a fire that burned his hands and arms badly. He had to get skin grafts that left him with scars elsewhere on the body to replace the skin that burned on his arms. Those skin graft areas gave his as much pain and trouble as the actual burns did.

A group of researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine has developed new tech that is described as being similar to an ink jet printer that is able to print skin directly onto a wound (Opens PDF doc). The printer sprays a combination of skin cells, collagen, and blood coagulants onto the wound that form skin once mixed at the print head. Naturally, the wound still has to heal, but the hope is that the printer tech could one day replace the need for skin grafts.

Once perfected, the process could be used to treat soldiers with injuries on the battlefield.

[via Technology Review via DVICE]

Disposable Printer Concept: Like a Polaroid, Only Completely Different

Shane McGlaun — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:06:35 +0000

Anyone who has been to a family gathering in the last 20 years has probably had their photo taken with one of those old school Polaroid instant cameras. You know the type that spits the photo out the front and you can watch it develop. A new concept printer by Yuexun Chen & Chia-Chen Hsiao is sort of the same thing for the digital revolution.

Polaroid offers a portable printer that will print your photos on the go, but they are a weird size. This concept printer is a disposable unit that has the paper and ink all inside the cartridge.

The printer would come in different sizes to print the photo in whatever size you want. The concept also connects directly to your camera for the print out. This could be very cool, and if they were cheap enough I could see the concept working. I think these would have to sell in the under $20 range in order to be successful, though.

Working LEGO Printer Uses Felt-Tip Pens: Say What?

Range — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:47:09 +0000

I know that LEGO bricks can be used to make many things, but this is the first time that I’ve seen them being used for making fully-functional printer.

This LEGO printer was created by a guy named Squirrelfantasy. His working printer uses felt-tip pens instead of inkjets or lasers. Check out the video below to see it in action.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The way that it prints images kind of reminds me of a dot-matrix printer – or maybe an old X/Y plotter – albeit with a larger printing nib since this one uses a felt-tip pen. I wonder if printing resolution would go up if he used a fine-point felt pen? Sharpie, anyone?

[via Boing Boing via DVice]

Printstik Portable Printer: Print Travel Documents, the Report You Forgot, or That Really Funny Text Message

Lambert Varias — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:38:19 +0000

I sure as hell won’t find any use for this but maybe you would: The Printstik PS910 ME from PLANon is an ultra-compact (1″ x 10.75″ x 1.5″) rechargeable printer that can sync with your computer or smartphone via USB or Bluetooth, allowing you to print anything – emails, web pages, documents, boarding passes – on the go.

I think it’s more of an emergency solution rather than something you should rely on on a regular basis. For one, the Printstik uses thermal paper so you won’t be able to print colored material. But more importantly, it has a slow-ass printing speed – the Printstik PS910 ME can only print up to three pages per minute.

But if the printer’s USB and Bluetooth connectivity are solid and easy to use, then it’s going to appeal to a lot of businessmen, scientists or researchers who frequently find themselves in unfamiliar – or uninhabited – places. Here’s the Printstik PS910 ME in action at the recently concluded IFA consumer electronics exhibit in Berlin:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The Prinstik PS910 ME sells for $170 (USD) at Amazon. A roll of thermal paper good for up to 20 pages is included with every purchase; additional rolls cost $18.50 for a pack of 3.

[via AVING]

Hp Photosmart Printer has Its Own App Store: Print-a-Fart Apps Anyone?

Lambert Varias — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:22:49 +0000

HP recently introduced their latest printer called Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web (henceforth called PSPWTSW), a name which if stripped of marketing speak actually reveals the printer’s capabilities: it’s a photo printer (actually it’s an all-in-one) with a 4.33″ touchscreen, and it can connect to the web via WiFi. What the name doesn’t tell you is that HP is also launching an app store for the printer called HP Apps Studio. I’m not sure if there are an awful lot of things you can do with a printer and a touchscreen, but I’ll let developers sort that one out.

HP has already secured the support of a few websites that will provide unique services and features available only to future users of the PSPWTSW. For example, users will be able to print USA Today stories straight off the printer’s touchscreen. Nickelodeon has a bunch of kid-friendly content for print such as word finds, color-ins and mazes. Users will also be able to print Google Maps, coupons, and even movie tickets. Neat.

The PSPWTSW will be available in the United States come autumn for $399 USD. Gizmodo was able to procure a test unit, and while they thought that the hardware is topnotch, they came upon the logical conclusion that the things you can do on the tiny touchscreen can be done just as easily – of not easier – on a normal computer. Maybe HP should have attached a printer to a monitor instead of attaching a tiny computer to a printer.

[via gadgetell]