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

Another 1,000 Pages In 1 Minute

Recently, we have seen two similar technologies revolutionizing the speed of inkjet printing — HP’s Steamline and Silverbrook Memjet. The innovation factor was in creating a fixed printhead spanning the whole width of the page.

Two Israeli researchers The College of Judea and Samaria — Moshe and Nissim Einat — have developed a revolutionary printing technique called Jetrix. This technique take printing speeds even higher – up to 1,000 pages per minute — since it enables simultaneous high-speed printing of an entire page of text.

Jetrix is a mixture of Inkjet Technology and Liquid Crystal Technology. Inspired by LCDs that could instantly create an image with a screen-sized array of diodes, Moshe Einat started to wonder if the same idea could be applied to printing the whole page. Inspiration led to creation of a page-size matrix of printheads with multiple ink chambers.

These chambers are the key to the new technology. Each chamber is a tiny tank of ink connected to just a few nozzles and supplying only those nozzles. The chambers are not connected with one another, so the matrix of printheads can be created as large as the paper, without limit.

The built prototype can only print black and white, but Einat is sure the idea can be realized in full color too.

Yes, there are printer that can print as fast as 1,000 ppm, but they are room-sized. This new printing technology allows making printer more compact. We shall wait for the first full-working printer to appear.

Xerox Invisible Fluorescent Printing

Group of Xerox scientists devised a new method for printing hidden fluorescent text using standard printers. The fluorescent text is only visible in ultraviolet light, at the same time it does not require fluorescent toner to print it.

This new method is side product of Xerox’s larger studies to put more security into digitally printed documents by making any element on the page-—such as lines, text, and images-—unique to the recipient. The scientists were playing with differential gloss in a toner to print a hologram-like image, when one of them, Reiner Eschbach, started to wonder if there was any chance to make fluorescent marks using regular toner.

Eschbach's group tried different toner combinations to achieve paper's fluorescence shining when exposed to ultraviolet light. They come to this after they realized most paper already contains fluorescent brightening agents added by manufacturers to make the paper look whiter.

According to the company, the new method of fluorescent printing allows adding more security to commonly printed materials such as checks, tickets, coupons, and other high-value documents.

Print Greener, Print Cost-Effective, Print Smart

In modern world of electronic communications people still have to do a lot with paper. Course projects, year reports, club flyers, advertisement brochures – all that required paper. In a known fact that paper is made of processed trees. Thus, the more pages is printed, the more trees are cut.

In effort to make printing more environment friendly, GreenPrint Technologies developed a software that would reduce amount paper waste in office printing. Recently launched in United Kingdom, GreenPrint Enterprise software highlights and removes unwanted pages before they are printed, creates PDF files as alternative for printing. Also, it gives a print overview, so users can easily decide what stays and what goes. Besides, the software has other options for ink and toner saving.

GreenPrint Enterprise incorporates a feature that reports how many trees were saved during the use of application. The company estimates that an organization employing 20,000 people could save GBP1.3 million annually, which equals 35.2 million pages or 3,911 trees.

GreenPrint Enterprise software is optionally accompanied with GreenPrint EverGreen Font. This font was specially “designed to allow more words to fit on each printed page without compromising readability. Compared with common fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman and Helvetica, EverGreen reduces paper use by 15-20%.”

Wireless Mountable Printer

A printer that need no cables and occupies no room on you desktop. Think it's impossible? Absolutely not. Designers at Ransmeier & Floyd developed a wireless printer that can be mounted on the wall. The printer has a frame that printed pictures fall into, which make it a decorative piece of interior design, not only a functional device. The only thing not clear is how this printer is powered. Nothing is said about this and picture shows no power cord. Some say the printer might be battery-powered.

Three Dimensions for Your Home

If you ever dreamt of a device that would produce real objects, then your dream is coming true. Three-dimension printers have always been something large, expensive and available only to chosen ones. Until now.

Desktop Factory made 3-D printer smaller, cheaper and more affordable. The company will start selling its first printer for $4,995 this year, and price is expected to fall to $1,000 in next four years. So in the nearest future 3-D printer would be available to home users.

How does the printer actually work, you may ask. The plastic powder, an analogue of toner in regular printers, is dropped on and sticks to a heated roller, where it is fused with a light beam to make an image. Then image is rolled onto metal plate to form a layer. The plate moves down as more layers are stacked to make an object. When the object is created, the plate moves up to squeeze the layers under heat and fuse them. (Pictures taken from www.nytimes.com)

The printing method is yet to be improved, because the model makes objects with rather jagged edges and rather sandy finish that many do not find attractive, NY Times story tells. But there is demand that does not require high quality and cannot afford large printers.

The picture above shows what kind of object the new 3-D printer can create. They say more 3-D objects blueprints will be available later on the Internet for people to download and create.

"Gelly" Printers by Ricoh

Ricoh UK introduced a new range of desktop printers using gel-based color-system. The new Ricoh Aficio GX3000, GX3050N and GX5050N have a high speed of printing, up to 30 pages per minute in monochrome and color. The speed could be compared to the speed of laser printers, but the price is more like that of inkjets.

Ricoh proprietary GelSprinter Technology uses pigment-based liquid gel that sits on the media surface, but not diffuses into it as inks do. The company says the printouts are fast to dry and waterproof, which makes a double-side printing possible. Besides, the printers feature Electrostatic Belt Feeding System that is supposed to hold paper firmly in place and prevent paper jams.

New printers use special gel cartridges of standard (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) color. One color cartridge yields 1,150 pages, while a black cartridge is enough to print 1,450 papers, as stated on Ricoh site. Priced £28.45 and £22.45 (approximately $57 and $45) for color and black cartridge, respectfully, these cartridges are somewhat in the middle between ink and laser printer cartridges, when it comes to yield/cost effectiveness.

We shall see if this gel technology proves to be viable.

How Would You Like Your Toast? – Printed!

Many areas of human life have enjoyed the printing technologies – medicine, electronics and so on. However, as time goes by, printing finds new, absolutely unexpected areas of application. This time it all started with fun, when guys from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories used a hot-air gun to make images on a slice of toast.

Not satisfied with results of hand drawing, they decided to mount the hot-air gun to the carriage of a 3D printer they built for their previous project. Since toast printing does not require third dimension, Z-axis of the printer was disabled. With hot-air gun used as a printhead, they achieved a resolution of 10 dots per inch (2.5 mm pixel size).

Also, the printer was could make photo images on a toast, which required some additional adjusting (air flow rate, temperature, etc.) of printer hardware, actually the hot-air gun.

Below is a video of how toast is printed using digital toast imaging technology.

Silver Filled Inkjet Printer Produces Electric Circuits

Guys from the University of Leeds found another way to use an inkjet printer – to create electric circuits.

During experiment, student Seyed Bidoki filled an HP inkjet printer with solution of silver salt and ascorbic acid, that is Vitamin C. This combination proved to be the most successful of all and included water.

"We wanted to be able to use a totally water-soluble base," said team member and chemist Matthew Clark. "That allows for much more environmentally friendly processes."

Then they printed different circuits on variety of media – paper, cotton, acetate, and even transparent film, and it worked out good. To improve conductivity, patterns are printer two or three times.

(taken from www.newscientisttech.com)

The developers say this inkjet technology has long way to go to be accepted for industrial scale production, but it does make new kind of devices possible.

This April is rich in alternative inkjet printer use. Just the other inkjet technology was used in medicine, bio engineering, nano technology research and other fields of human activities

Inkjet Printer Creates Body Organs

A news that coincides with one of my previous posts, where I reported use of inkjet printers for creating artificial bones. Scientists at Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine are using inkjet printers to create organs and tissues, that’s something that could change the very way of studying tissue engineering.

(picture from www.newscientist.com)

Regular ink cartridges available almost everywhere are emptied, cleaned and filled with the cells needed to create the organ. Then, an inkjet printer prints these cells into a substance resembling human tissues. Printed layer by layer, cells form the required shape of muscle or organ.

Adopting inkjet printers for the need of tissue engineering resulted in more precise, accurate, fast and, most importantly, controlled creation of biomaterials.

It seems to me that inkjet technology for today’s science is like an invention of the wheel for our ancestors – it’s spread far over the area it was designed for.

Inkjet Printing and Nano Technology

Inkjet printing started being used in nano technologies. Maren Roman, a scientist from Virginia Tech, has been taking a research on nanocrystals, and the discovery she made may lead to a new generation of vaccines and better computer printer ink.

Roman was using an inkjet printer to place the crystals. This way is more accurate, due to printer’s precision, and safe. Nanoncrystals are extremely hard to operate, because of their size, and are usually converted into powder for handling. Being a powder, nanocrystals may be very hazardous if inhaled. So, inkjet printer provides a safe way to operate them.

First thing to come up with me is that original ink manufacturers may very well use this innovation. First, to protect their ink formulas from being reproduced; second, to prevent use of compatible inks with printers. Am I being a paranoid already? :)

Inkjet To the Bone

There is another implementation of inkjet technology, now it helps create artificial bones. With a modified inkjet printer, scientists can produce perfect ‘hard copies’ of damaged bones to be inserted into the body to help it revive.


“The “paper” in our printer is a thin bed of cement-like powder. The inkjets spray the cement with an acid which reacts with it and goes hard. That deals with one layer. Then new layers of fresh powder are sprayed on top, and the layers build up to the shape we need", says Professor Jake Barralet of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

The printer itself is as big as three cabinets and can produce a typical bone in 10 minutes.

Now scientists are looking for a way to create artificial skin with use of inkjet technology.

Another Use of An Inkjet Printer

Epson is steadily expanding inkjet printing into different fields of application. One such field is textile industry. Epson already cooperates with Italian company Robustelli on production of large-size textile printers based on Epson’s Micro Piezo inkjet technology.

Next area where Epson plans to use inkjet printers is akin to textile printing – a production of wallpapers and tiles.

Another thing was truly amazing to me. I never thought an inkjet technology could be used in production of in the manufacturing of LCD panels. LCD panels rely on a grid of RGB color filters each of them make up a tiny tri-colored pixel in the entire panel.

Currently, production of these color filter panels involves a three-step process, where each step requires laying down a grid of one color, followed by laying down the next color and so on. To reduce the steps required, Epson worked together with Sharp Corporation to create the first inkjet-based color filter printer ever which prints all three colors simultaneously.

Next innovation to follow is a printable TV content. Epson has been working with TV makers and stations to develop such service. Imagine you’re watching a cooking show, pretty usual, huh? But! Soon you’ll be able to print out the recipes given! Of course, it’d require a printer connected to your TV-set, likely via USB.

Currently, Epson is promoting this innovation with Japanese TV stations.

Well, seems like we are entering an era of new types of multifunction – first, printer showing video, now TVs printing text. Can’t wait to see what’s coming up.

60 Pages Per Minute Inkjet Printer

An Australian company Silverbrook Research announced a technology called Memjet it’s been working on for a decade. The technology required to over 1400 patents.

The developer asserts the innovation will enable a jet print speed unheard of before – 60 pages per minute in color.

In printers supporting Memjet Technology, the printhead that span the width of an A4 page. First such printers are going to be quite affordable – around $200, and the ink price is good too – less then $20 for 50 ml.

Technical specifications for Memjet Technology are expected the soonest (currently, they charge around $3000 for a detailed report on implemented technologies). You can view a video demonstrating the speed of a prototype built on the new technology.

Truth to be told, I see it as as logical continuation for the previous post. This is a great idea to make a printhead as wide as a sheet of paper to print on. I just wonder why it took 10 years and millions of dollars for the idea to emerge.