Let's be honest, no one likes buying printers. As students, you most likely experienced the dilemma about whether to purchase a printer or rely on commercial vendors like FedEx Kinkos instead. I thought buying my own would be more convenient, but is it really worth all that money. Am I even saving, and if so, how much? I bought one despite my ambivalence and hesitation. What's more frustrating is when your ink runs out, and the most dreaded moment arrives – buying more ink! In most cases, the ink tends to cost a substantial amount of money (sometimes more than buying a brand-new printer itself).
What if I told you that you may never have to invest in ink again? You'd probably jump with joy. Well, that day may soon arrive. Scientists are calling it “un-printing”. The idea of “un-printing” is becoming more of a reality. Based on recent developments and discoveries, a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge claim that it is possible to remove toner from a paper and enable its re-use with the right type of laser technology (Netburn, 2012). After lots of experimentation with all kinds of lasers, including ultraviolet, visible, and infrared, they claim that toner removal and re-use is possible. This is groundbreaking news!
Furthermore, the team of researchers believe that “un-printing” will open new doors in the area of sustainability and recycling. Imagine, we could re-use paper that already has ink on it. Basically, we remove the ink from used paper, and then re-print on the paper with our desired content (Netburn, 2012). These processes are more sustainable and leave a smaller ecological footprint. While the technology is still in testing phases, and may initially cost a significant amount, it certainly sounds like a long-term investment.
Not only will this affect printer manufacturers and their revenues, but hopefully it will get them to set more reasonable prices for ink. What do you think?
Netburn, Deborah. (2012). Scientists develop the un-printer - vaporizes ink from paper. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/scientists-develop-the-unprinter--vaporises-ink-from-paper-20120319-1veat.html#ixzz1pVmWETaL
This sounds fantastic! In fact, I heard somewhere that printer ink costs more per liter than human blood. Obviously the technology you mentioned is not anywhere close to being implemented on a worldwide scale, but the possibility is incredibly exciting. I've heard of some research with carbon nanofibers. Imagine a sheet of these fibers, and perhaps if printing were redefined to rearrange them in such a way that they reflected light differently based on their orientation, printing would not involve ink at all, as you described.
ReplyDeletePrinter ink costs more than human blood!? That is quite disturbing. I'll definitely look into the carbon nanofibers research you're talking about - it sounds very cool. Whatever the case, printing could use some reform, for financial and environmental reasons!
DeleteThis is definitely one piece of technology I am waiting for to jump and buy the moment it comes out. Imagine the environmental benefits from un-printing. Does it leave the paper blank? if it does then it would be the perfect unprinter!
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand you could use the same piece of paper over and over again. Using the lasers as described in the post, it extracts the toner from the paper. In that case I assume the paper would be the original colour. It sounds fascinating, right?
DeleteWow! That sounds like a really good idea. I have a printer too, and I haven't used it in almost 2 years. The printer I had before that would refuse to print anything for me so I threw it into a wall (which was surprisingly therapeutic).
ReplyDeleteSomething else that is pretty exciting in the printing field, is the idea of 3-D printing. I'm sure you've heard about it too. I think that printing in general has been lagging behind other technologies thus far, but we will see a lot of innovation in the field in the near future hopefully.
I never thought about it that way. But you're right! 3D TVs have became quite common nowadays, but the idea of 3D printing remains unheard of (well, for the common man/woman at least). I wonder why that is. Definitely something to look into though!
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