PALO ALTO, Calif.--It looks and feels like a square, yellow crayon.
But it's actually a lot more sophisticated than that. It's ink in solid form (aptly called "solid ink") made of a polymeric resin, and Xerox researchers are using it, combined with advances in print head technology to make a greener printer.
Solid ink before it is melted and jetted onto paper in a printer.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)Solid ink is different from what's used in the average desktop printer. Instead of buying cartridges filled with liquid ink, which are inserted into small print heads that race back and forth to transfer an image to paper, solid ink is melted, then dripped into a single drum that's as wide as a regular sheet of paper.
The image is then transferred with heat and pressure to paper. It takes about 10 revolutions of the drum to transfer the image, which is then hardened and ejected from the printer.
So how is it greener? Liquid ink requires a lot more packaging--the cartridge and the box it comes in. Xerox says solid ink outputs 90 percent less waste than liquid ink, and saves up to 260 pounds of discarded cartridges and their packaging over the life of a single desktop printer.
It also doesn't require any water or solvent to dry the ink. It does, however, require more energy to heat thick ink to melt it. (The melting point is between 70 degrees and 100 degrees Celsius.) Xerox says it continues to tinker with insulation and the ink's melting point to squeeze more energy efficiency out of every solid ink printer.
Another way researchers are looking to improve the tech's green cred is through the print heads themselves.
Smaller, modular print heads distribute melted solid ink.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)By making the print head smaller than the standard 8.5-inch-wide one used in solid ink printing, the new modular print heads can scale to fit multiple kinds of printers using different ink and different media. Xerox says it can output 300 dpi (dots per inch) and the cost of each drop is improved greatly. Despite the improvements, new print heads do mean needing to buy a new printer to take advantage of the technology.
Xerox says this will be available in consumer desktop printers within a year.
Note: This blog was updated at 10:30 a.m.
Dell is broadening its retail presence, and on Monday announced a distribution agreement with Staples.
Desktops, notebooks, printers, ink and toner from Dell will be sold in 1,400 Staples stores and on the Staples Web site beginning November 11. Dell Inspiron 1721 and 1521 notebooks, Inspiron 530 desktops, Dell 948 and 926, 1320c laser printers, and two flat-panel LCD monitors will be the first products to hit shelves.
Dell decided to go with Staples because of its wide reach, and because of its commitment to customer support, according to Michael Tatelmen, Dell's vice president of global sales and marketing. The agreement between the two companies has no expiration date set yet, and Tatelman says Dell plans on updating its offerings through Staples in the future.
The agreement between the office supplies giant and the Round Rock, Texas, PC maker shows Dell is getting serious about a retail strategy, which the company has been hinting at since May. It announced then that it would sell a few desktops and notebooks through Wal-Mart Stores and Sam's Club, which signaled a major shift in its sales model. The move puzzled some because it appeared the company wanted it both ways--dabbling in retail while still refusing to back away completely from its longtime direct-sales model.
But since then Dell has also said it will offer its PCs in several international retailers, including Gome in China, Bic Camera in Japan and Carphone Warehouse in the U.K.
Investors put in $16 million more into E-Ink in the latest effort to get the e-book ball rolling.
That brings the total that the small company has raised to $150 million, according to VentureWire. The market, however, has yet to take flight. Everyone loves the idea. E-books don't consume trees and you can carry several books at once. Some believe that college textbooks will go this way.
Still, no one seems to be buying them yet. The most prominent product to use the company's technology is the Sony Reader, an electronic book from the Japanese giant. Sony has sold some, but not a lot of these devices.
"I'd like to sell a hell of a lot more than we're selling," said Sony Electronics president Stan Glasgow in an interview in June.
E-books were tried in the 90s. NuvoMedia and SoftBook Press both came out with e-books back then. NuvoMedia aimed itself at consumers and SoftBook aimed at business users. Neither sold well. But, the companies lucked out. Gemstar-TV Guide International bought them both for around $300 million in 2000, when concept companies were selling for premiums.
NuvoMedia founder Martin Eberhard took the money, retired for a while, and then formed Tesla Motors. So something has come out of all of this.
E-Ink was founded in 1997 and grew out of the MIT Media Labs.
A collaboration between military R&D and industrial designers is bringing state-of-the-art PDA technology to Joe Snuffy out on the battlefield.
The Soldier Flex PDA (SFPDA) introduced by Inhand Electronics features flexible display technology with input from industrial design firm Artisent, display technology firm E-Ink and the U.S. Army Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University.
(Credit:
Inhand Electronics)
The PDA offers InHand's PXA270-based Fingertip4 CPU board, along with Ethernet, USB, Bluetooth and keypad interfaces all in a "ruggedized" glass-free package that weighs less than a pound. Best of all, the unique low-power characteristics of electronic paper displays and InHand's patented BatterySmart system keep power consumption at well below a single watt. Battery life runs about six hours, according to the Maryland company.
The device opens up the realm of possibilities for distributing critical battlefield-networked information to infantry combat soldiers on long duration missions, explains Henry Girolamo, SFPDA program manager at the Army's Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center.
That, and having a PDA around should make pulling guard duty a lot more entertaining.
Hewlett-Packard is accusing European print supply maker Pelikan Hardcopy of unfair business practices in an ongoing legal spat over ink cartridges, the company announced Monday.
HP's German subsidiary, Hewlett-Packard GmbH, said in a second lawsuit filed in a German court that Pelikan's German subsidiary is selling two models of color inkjet print cartridges labeled as remanufactured products, when they are actually new. HP says it discovered Pelikan's supposed violation as part of the Imaging and Printing Group's worldwide testing efforts. HP one of the largest suppliers of printers and ink in the world. Pelikan is based in Switzerland and has branches in 11 European countries.
Pelikan has previously run afoul of HP. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company sued Pelikan in early May in a different German court and asked that Pelikan be barred from selling several models of color ink cartridges that it says violate three ink formula and three cartridge patents belonging to HP.
Both lawsuits are ongoing. This is not the first time HP has sued a remanufacturer or cartridge refiller over intellectual property violations. Printing is HP's most profitable business and it relies heavily on customer purchases of its ink cartridges, which offer much better profit margin than the actual printing hardware.
Most printer suppliers make ink cartridges that work only with their own models of printers. But there are plenty of companies that sell discount ink to consumers and businesses looking to spend less on cartridges. In the past, HP, Lexmark and other leading printing suppliers have used a variety of legal means to protect their ink and cartridge patents, including, in one case, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
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