HP Inkjet Technology Delivers Dialysis

Hewlett Packard has licensed Home Dialysis Plus (HD+) to use HP’s inkjet technology to mix water and concentrated dialysate, a mixture of chemicals used to remove toxins and deliver electrolytes to blood in human body.

HP states mixing the solution helps filter toxins over a longer period, and HP’s smart memory-chip technology will secure the correct dialysate prescription is being delivered consistently to conduct dialysis while the patient is at sleep.

The deal between the two companies came out of HP’s intellectual-property licensing program, and HD+ expects to get its machine onto the market by the end of 2010.

HP says there are many technologies available for licensing that lend themselves well to the health and life-sciences industry, and the company will continue to look for opportunities within a variety of markets so that people can further benefit from HP inventions.

Via TCD blog

Epson Introduces a Recyclable Printer

Epson’s EC-01 inkjet printer is the top product in their new Environmental Vision 2050 initiative. Epson has set the following four key conditions in order to work towards achieving Environmental Vision 2050:

• Reduction of CO₂ emissions by 90% across the entire product life cycle.
• Inclusion of all products in the resource reuse and recycling loop.
• Reduction of direct CO₂ emissions by 90%, and elimination of global warming gas emissions other than CO₂.

The printer is shipped in an unpainted recycled cardboard box, the manual is printed on recycled paper, and the included driver CD is stored within an envelope made of recycled paper. But what really sets this printer apart is that you don’t replace the ink: when the cartridge runs out, you replace the whole printer. Great, huh?

Via TCD blog

Computer Controlled Inkjet-Like Waterfall

Below there’s a video of a waterfall that is controlled by a computer to “printing out” astonishing patterns and pictures. This waterfall is located in Canal City Hakata, a shopping and entertainment complex in Fukuoka, Japan.

As you can see from the video, the waterfall seems to function using same techniques as an inkjet printer. Basically a computer is controlling hundreds of nozzles to precisely deliver water drops so that they fall forming images or texts.

Printer For Ceramic Tiles

Newtech SRL has announced KeraMagic, the first digital color printer to produce images on ceramic tiles.

The new printer is based on inkjet technology, incorporates grayscale Xaar 1001 inkjet printheads to carry out drop-on-demand jobs in a single pass


The KeraMagic is available is two configurations – the 350 mm width model and a 700 mm width model. It can print at up to 25m per minute at resolutions up to 360 dpi and with eight levels of grayscale.

The company says the KeraMagic can output a variety of fluids to produce tiles effectively in short-run volumes.

Newtech SRL will launch KeraMagic at Tecnargilla, which takes place in Rimini on 30 September to 4 October.

Via TCD blog

Universal Drivers Not So Universal

Not so long ago, Xerox released a set of drivers designed to fit all printers - Mobile Express Driver. So did HP, except its set of drivers is called Universal Print Driver.

Now it is discovered that the two set of universal drivers are not so universal. In a working environment with a variety of different printers, Robert L. Mitchel at ComputerWorld.com. tested the two drivers sets. He found out that neither of them was a remedy for the faced printing problems. However, both tools are useful and one can make them play nicely together.

More on how these to drivers set are different learn from TCD blog.

Monochrome Printing Is Not Dead, Say Experts

Today we can witness how more and more color laser printer become available at low price. Some are even approaching the prices of their monochrome counterparts. Does that mean black-and-white laser printer are about to extinct anytime soon?

On TCD blog you can find out what experts from major printer companies think about that.

Soy Bean Toner Cartridges

It turns out the US currently uses over 100 million cartridges per year. To produce that amount of cartridges, 100 million pounds or 50,000 tons of oil must be processed. That means high-volume energy consumption and tons of landfill afterwards.

In an effort to reduce this tremendous amount of nature’s raw materials, PRC Technologies, a division of Print Recovery Concepts Inc., announced a real environmental breakthrough. PRC has developed a way to make toner powder out of soybeans.

The company says soy toner is absolutely harmless to the printers. Just as harmless as it is for humans

Via TCD blog

How Less Packaging Can Save You Money

One-third of American garbage is packaging materials, according to the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington.

And there’s not necessarily a good reason for it. Many companies are simply following convention and haven’t looked into better ways to package their products.

Not only is minimal packaging better for the environment, it also costs less to produce. Companies can save a lot of money when they reduce packaging.

Printer cartridges add to the problem of overpackaging, too.

Learn how you can save money and contribute to a better environment with Toner Cartridge Depot.

Know What Yellow Dots Say About You

A study done by Electronic Frontier Foundation finds that most color laser printers add an identifying code on every page you print. This code is actually microscopic yellow dots printed on each page in a grid pattern. Normally these dots are invisible to the naked eye and can only be seen using a blue LED light.

The information in the yellow dots varies, some have just the serial number of the printer and others also have the date printed. On the picture below you can see the date and time when page was printed and the serial number of the printer.

Originally the technology was implemented to help secret services track and find counterfeiter who use color laser printers to forge money and other valuable documents. But who know how seriously this can compromise our privacy.

Calibrating a Home Inkjet Printer

You may have a history of photo printing with an inkjet, if so then you know that so when inks interact with paper, you can rarely expect good results at once (especially when they are made by different brands). But there’s something you can do about it — calibrate your printer.

TCD blog posted a good article on how to calibrate your inkjet printer at home.

Blogged!

I'm terribly proud to announce that this blog has been weighed, measured and scored 8. Blogged.com sent me a letter the other day saying had they reviewed my blog and given it an 8.0 score out of 10:

Dear Printing Depot author,

Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it an 8.0 score out of (10) in the Shopping category of Blogged.com.

This is quite an achievement!

We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.

After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 8.0 score.

We’ve also created Blogged.com score badges with your score prominently displayed. Simply visit your website’s summary page on Blogged.com:



Please accept my congratulations on a blog well-done!!

I'm very pleased with these 8 points as I didn't expect to be evaluated so high. Actually, I didn't expect to be evaluated at all, which makes it even more pleasant.

Hooray for me!

Make Your Prints Glow

You can easily pimp your printer to produce images glowing in the dark. All it takes is a glow dusk, printer ink and a microwave oven. This video clearly shows what to do with what.



Makes me wanting to buy a cheap printer and try. Do you think it is possible to do same trick with laser toner?

17 Ways of Reducing Printing Costs

TCD blog published a money-saving guide to those who think they spend way too much on printer and those who think there's no such thing as excessive costs management.

A Laser Printer That Sucks

Did you know your laser printer may actually save you from infringing the DMCA. Yes, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that prohibits you downloading pirated movies and software.

How is that possible?

Guys from University of Washington examined BitTorrent file-sharing networks using specially designed BitTorrent clients to monitor the traffic on these networks. The researchers didn’t download any files, but somehow they received over 400 takedown requests - notices from the ISP to stop distributing that copyrighted content.

Funny thing is one of those requests was forwarded to a network laser printer implying that it was downloading something. A coincidental discovery that one may use it his favor, don't you think?

Inkjet Printers May Replace Offset Presses

Want it or not, but the of all the printing technologies inkjets develop faster and wider. Inkjet printers have been successfully adapted for use in a variety of fields other than general printing of text and images. Today the inkjet technology achieved much greater speed of printing than it originally had.

Having matched laser printers, it is now threatening the king of speed print - offset press. At the Drupa 2008, a trade show dedicated exclusively to printers and printing technologies, major printer makers are showing new inkjet presses predicted to be the future of commercial printing.

This future is yet to come, but surely won't make us wait for itself for too long.

HP Innovations & New Injet Technologies

I totally forgot to say last week a new article was published on TCD blog about HP innovations in printer ink, toner & media.

Today I'm reforming and telling you in timely manner another news. If you're keeping eye on what's going on in the printing industry, you may be interested to know that in the nearest future the inkjet printers are likely to supplant offset printing from it's pedestal of commercial printing king.

New inkjet presses being half as fast as their offset counterparts, offer almost same level of quality at 4 times lower price per page. Digital future is inevitable, guys :)

A printing depot that is not printing depot

Today I analyzed visitor statistics, who comes from where and what keywords they used. It turns out there's another couple of printing depots (a link to only one ancient site, 'cause the other site is down). They have nothing to do with this blog, just like this blog has nothing to do with them. It's just a pure coincidence of the names.

It may look suspicious that I deny any connection between our sites, but it's not like that. It was a funny thing to discover, that' all. We are not along in the internet!

How to Understand What Your Inkjet Printer Tells You

Just yesterday I wrote a post about what an printer's trying to say when it's flashing its indicators. For instance, when a printer's orange LED blinks 2 times, that generally means there's no paper detected in paper tray, or something is stuck in paper path and prevent paper from being supplied properly. As the whole issue only concerns inkjet printer, you won't find a word about toner, but you will learn what printer's blinking signals mean.

Knowing the signals is not enough, without knowing what to do about them. This kind of information I provided as well.

Another Good Use for a Photocopier

No matter how bad things are, there's always a way out, you just need to use your brains just like the guy in this video. Run out of gift-wrapping paper? Make some yourself! Simply get printer paper and color toner.

Actually, you don't even have to unzip your pants, any material with a pattern relevant to your event will do.

Toner Cartridge Depot Has New Main Page

Well, this is it, TCD got a new home page. In my opinion, it got better in terms of both design and usability. I hope our customers will have the same opinion :)

How to Tell If Cartridges You Bought Are Original

Buying replacement cartridges for you laser of inkjet printer can be a rocket science as there are lots of printing supplies of all sizes, colors and shapes. Even if there is only one cartridge you need to replace, visit local computer store and see how many options for replacement it offers. Original, compatible and remanufactured cartridges, refillable cartridges, toner and so on. Each of these options has its pros and cons, but it's subject of this post.

Today we suppose that of all the options you chose to buy original cartridges. They are said to be most reliable and provide high quality of printing with every printed page. Another well-know fact is that original cartridges are more expensive compared to other alternatives. When you give away you own money for a brand cartridge, I bet you have to be sure it's not a fake.

From two articles on TCD blog you will know how to identify original ink cartridges and toner cartridges (HP cartridges case study)

TCD Blog Keeps On Getting Updated

You may have known from previous posts that scientists have adopted the inkjet printer for printing electric circuits, artificial bones, blood vessels and body organs. Yet, inkjet printing proves versatile technology for creating other non-imaging products.

A company named Konarka Technologies announced that it manufactured solar cells with an inkjet printing technology. Using the existing and very simple technologies of an office inkjet printer, Konarka has replaced ink with the solar cell material, and paper with a thin flexible sheet of plastic.

Cool, isn't it?

Here are some more futuristic technologies. Hewlett-Packard offered a peek into future printing technologies, introducing a new inkjet printer that prints thousands of pages per minute and ink that retains its shine even when exposed to extreme elements.

HP’s water-based Latex Ink has special formula that allows it to embed in a surface and become part of a media print. HP’s Latex Ink can withstand snow and even rain and is useful for large-format media used on billboards and outdoor signs.

Also, the company launched the Inkjet Web Press printer, which can print up to 2,600 A4-sized color pages a minute at as little as US$0.01 per color page.

Speaking of inkjet printers.

It is good to have them at hand to print you tax returns, a postcard to your friends or a receipt from cooking site. Unfortunately, sometime they just stop working. The most common problem with inkjet printers is clogged cartridge.

Of course, the best way to get rid of clogged jets is to prevent them. But if you have already got involved into this unpleasant situation, there is a good way to unclog your inkjet printer. Actually, this is a receipt you may try to print out before the printhead gets clogged.

Speaking of printheads.

Printer ink is definitely more capacious technology than, say, toner. Kyocera developed the world fastest and industry widest drop-on-demand inkjet printhead. The printhead can use both water-based pigment and UV inks and print on variety of media – from paper to fabric, film and plastic. Just like that.

To tell the truth, Kyocera printhead is not the only device that can print on virtually all media. A wide-format Solara ion inkjet printer introduced by Gerber. The printer can print on virtually any surface that is up 64 inches wide and up to 1 inch thick! You'll get more details on this printer, if visit TCD blog.

That's all for today. See you!

Tons of New Information from The World of Printers on TCD blog

Hello again!

Today we'll continue to review last and most interesting updates on TCD blog.

Where did we stopped? Ah, the illegal yellow dots, ok.

I bet you or at least your friend or your friend's friend for sure have or had a HP Deskjet inkjet printer at home. The chances are this is a way too old model of Deskjet. Indeed, do you know how old these series of printers is?

Just in February HP celebrated 20th anniversary of Deskjet printers. The first model first saw the light of this world in 1988. Ever since then, millions of Deskjet printers have been released.

Let's move on. Have you ever faced the problem of choosing a printer for your home of office? Oh, you ARE having this problem... that's ok, there is an article on TCD blog that will tell you how to choose a printer for your office.

Many people now have two or more computers at home and you maybe one of those. As many other people, you have only one printer, but you’re not the only one who wants to use it. What you may do in this situation? One solution is to visit a local computer store and buy another printer. But I suggest that you save those $100-200 for something better and share your existing printer with your computers. It’s no rocket science and you can easily do it yourself.

How? Learn that from the article "Connecting a Printer to Several Computers." For connecting wireless read this post

As you can see, I announce mostly technology news and events that took place in printer world. Rarely do i mention a device, though there are some worth talking about.

One such device is DYMO DiskPainter. This is printer that 'paints' in CD and DVD disk surface (as well as on other disks of same size, I'm sure) using an interesting DYMO’s technology named RadialPrint that prints directly onto the CD while it is spinning. Obviously, the printer uses ink, not toner. By the way Dymo is the company that produces this printer.

You may have known that inkjet printers use different types of inks and I don't mean the colors. There are dye-based inks and there are pigment inks. "How are they different?" you may ask. This and many other things about inks you will learn from “Debunking the Myths of Digital Inks,” an article by Tony Martin for Digital Photo Techniques magazine.

Toner Cartridge Depot Blog Updated Again!

I"m so sorry I have not written a post for ages (only a couple of month, actually, but 'ages' sounds more significant).

So, the last post is followed by Xerox flash-fusing technology which is claimed to be “major technology breakthrough in high-speed color printing”. By flashing a Xenon light more than 2,000 times per second, Xerox color continuous feed printers fuse the toner much faster and achieve speeds of nearly 500 color pages per minute. Great speed, isn’t it?

Remember a study in Australia which revealed that laser printers emit ultra-fine particle (UFP) into air? Well, same study was conducted in Europe by Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. Guess what the results were? Right, laser printers are just as hazardous in Europe as they are in Australia.

If you don’t really care about UFP pollution, you may sit back and watch a video demonstration the insides of Zink paper – a paper that require no ink to produce images.

Meanwhile, prices for printer ink reached $1000, per barrel, of course. And some time after that, Ford decides to put printer into its cars

Let’s get back to Europe. “A European Union commissioner issued an official statement about the legality of printer tracking dot systems last month in response to a query from a member of the European Parliament. The commissioner states that no laws presently address the issue, but notes that it could possibly constitute a violation of the right to privacy guaranteed by the European Union’s Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.”

Bottom line: tiny yellow dots that a color printer leaves seem illegal. Like someone doubted that.

That’s not all, more update will follow next time. Visit this site or go directly to TCD official blog for latest news in printer industry.

Toner Cartridge Depot Blog Updated

If you ever seen "X pages at 5% coverage" in a cartridge description and wondered how much these 5% really are, you can find the answer in new article. It gives the idea of how toner yield (or page yield) is calculated. You will see a spectacular example of what 5 percent coverage print looks like and download a sample page.

Also, you will learn that main advantages LED printing technology has of laser printing are

• smaller and more reliable printing devices
• no ozone when printing
• higher imaging precision
• information security

The first post with video is added showing that some printers can produce images of unlimited size.

Every one of us has questions he or she wants to have answers for. While most of those questions are quite specific ‘Will I pass this or not?’ others are rhetorical ones - ‘What the purpose of life?’, ‘What is love?’ or ‘How are you doing?’ There are also questions that at first glance seem specific, but turn out to be rhetorical under closer examination.

One such question is "why is printer ink so expensive?" is considered in another article.

All this. as well as announces of new printers and other posts you can find on TCD blog