How To Print Without Using Ink or Power October 03, 2011 15:30 by Matt Bird

A new concept design has potentially paved the way for a revolutionary kind of printing, without the need for ink or power. Welcome to the tanning printer!

An idea from development team Hosung Jung, Junsang Kim, Seungin Lee and Yonggu Do, this solar powered printer essentially burns your image and text onto the page, not too different from using a magnifying glass to focus the suns rays.

How Does the Tanning Printer Work?

The design team can show you far better than I, so behold this helpful image :)

Essentially, the head section of the printer moves back and forth over the page, beaming targetted heat to "burn" the page and create your printed image. Pretty cool huh :)

That's environmental friendliness right there, and is a fascinating extension of the ever growing solar energy craze. However, there is darkness in those sunny printing-hills....

Don't get A Printer Burn...

As with any solar technology, this tanning printer will be fairly useless without sunlight. With no power source bar the "Big Glowy" in the sky, if it ain't sunny, you ain't printing. Even taking into account the above-average September and October sunlight, any printing in the winter months may be a bit limited.

One further limitation is this can only do black and white prints... though if they find a way to make this produce colour then it will have some awesome implications for kids playing with magnifying glasses in summer.

Though only a concept printer, it will be intriguing to see how this design progresses in the near future. I really want to make a "Sunny D" joke to close off, but I just can't bring myself to stoop that low. Next time...