Inkless printing company Zink receives $35M funding

by officePROhub.com on 12/07/2011 - 01:02 am

Tag: Printers

Zink hints at bringing their space-age 'zero ink' printing technology to wider market

Financial trends and news by Nathan Pensky

It's not often that you hear about a company that aims to revolutionize an entire industry. But that is exactly what Zink, a company that manufactures paper for inkless color printing technology, is trying to do. Zink announced Tuesday a $35 million funding B series, led by investors Genii Capital.

Former board members Mary Jeffries and Ira Parker have also been hired as co-CEOs of Zink, in conjunction with this recent investment. Founded in 2005, Zink's research and development labs arebased in Bedford, Massachussets, with a manufacturing outlet in Whitsett, North Carolina.

Zink's inkless printing technology works by running special paper, which has been embedded with layers of cyan, magenta, and yellow "Amorphochromic" dye crystals, through a printer that heats the paper to create images. Zink's "zero ink" technology is able to isolate the heating of each color-forming layer to create an array of colors, and images of photorealistic resolution.

Inkless printing has been around for a while, and was actually used on some fax machine models. However the tech behind the oldest inkless method, thermal printing, doesn't allow for color printing. The other current inkless printing tech, which is now being developed by Xerox and has not yet been released to the public, uses paper coated with UV-sensitive chemicals and allows for color printing, as well as erasing of images via the same UV process.

The Zink technology has over 180 patents and patents pending. They are the only company to use the Amorphochromic dye crystals method.

Based on images on the company's website, the Zink paper seems very like normal paper. Zink's tech has already been implemented in a few photo printers that have gone out to market and, notably, a new generation of Poloroid cameras.

Zink has also partnered with Dell to create the Wasabi handheld color printer for photo printing, compatible with mobile phones, digital cameras, and blue-tooth.

One would speculate that the company will be using their new funding to put this space-age technology to the conventional printer market, since as of yet, it has been used only for photo printing. Zink could not be reached for immediate comment.

The perfect present - a 3D printer

by officePROhub.com on 12/07/2011 - 01:10 am

Tags: Inkjet Printers, Laser printers, Printers

The next industrial revolution could be upon us as machines that create items in plastic or concrete become ever cheaper, writes Roger Highfield.

By Roger Highfield - The Telegraph

8:53AM GMT 06 Dec 2011

Some use it to grow bones. Others to build planes. The American talk show host Jay Leno used it to replace the rusty bits of his 1907 White Steamer automobile, one of his vast collection of old cars. Hardly a week goes by without headlines about 3D printing, a technology that’s going to change the way you live. Welcome to the next industrial revolution.

The first industrial revolution boosted the income of hoi polloi and reshaped society over decades as manual labour was displaced by machine-based manufacturing. Factories produced items in their thousands and tens of thousands to enjoy vast economies of scale. Today, however, bespoke craftsmanship is making a comeback, thanks to 3D printing or “additive manufacturing”, in which a three-dimensional object is built layer by layer.

As a manufacturing process, 3D printing contrasts with the traditional “subtractive” approach, which relies on milling, grinding and cutting to remove material, wasting much of it in the process. This creative development offers all kinds of advantages and innovations.

The company 3T RPD, of Greenham Common, Berkshire, working in partnership with the University of Southampton, has created an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle; the world’s first 3D-printed aircraft. At Loughborough University, Richard Buswell is developing a vast, three-storey rig to create buildings by ''concrete printing’’.

Susmita Bose and colleagues at Washington State University recently described in the journal Dental Materials how they used a customised printer to create a bone-like material that can be used in orthopaedic operations and dental work. Other researchers are laying down layers of living cells. And a new generation of edible objects is being printed by Peter Walters at the University of the West of England. Scientists can reconstruct fossil bones, clone priceless artefacts and forge body parts.

Why stock warehouses with parts from abroad when entire designs can now be stored in virtual computer warehouses, waiting to be printed locally, and on demand? So asks a Science Museum curator, Ben Russell, who has used 3D printing at University College London to recreate the contents of a delicate plaster mould that turned out to be a lost bust of the Scottish engineer James Watt. He says 3D printing is an organic blend of craft and hi-tech that is a million miles from the production line assembly methods pioneered by Henry Ford.

The idea is not new: 3D printers have been available commercially for three decades, and are routinely used to make prototypes by car manufacturers. I first become aware of the potential of what was then called “rapid prototyping” in 2004, when I visited the Renault F1 team works in Oxfordshire, where titanium and plastic components were solidified from a soup of ingredients scanned by a beam of blue laser light.

But what has changed is that 3D printers are becoming cheaper, smarter, better and more ubiquitous. One of the more remarkable developments came from Adrian Bowyer of the University of Bath, with RepRap, which stands for ''replicating rapid-prototyper”, on which I reported for this paper. RepRap had first been honed to print out everyday plastic goods such as door handles, sandals and coat hooks. The machine works like a printer but, rather than squirting ink on to paper, it puts down thin layers of molten biodegradable plastic which solidify to make objects.

Three years ago, however, the machine had succeeded in copying all of its own 3D-printed parts, which could be assembled into a new RepRap machine.

RepRap marked the birth of a domestic machine, a revolution analogous to that which saw the mainframe computer give way to the desktop PC. Recently it became available in kit form and Bowyer has already sold 100. All the while, the software and other ingredients are getting cheaper. There are rival kits, from Bits from Bytes to MakerBot. There are hackers adapting and improving them. As the technology mutates and evolves, the quality of the objects they can make gets better.

“Just about everyone in developed countries runs their own CD-pressing plant, their own photographic laboratory, and their own printing press. So why shouldn’t they run their own factory, too?’ asks Bowyer. “And – while we’re at it – let’s make it a RepRap factory that manufactures more factories. We might get to a point where individuals can make all the things they want (including, of course, the RepRap machine that does the making).”

He likes to think of it as a new kind of home-grown movement, but for goods rather than food. “Your attic room will be your machine kitchen-garden, making everything from door handles to mobile phones. And if you have an actual kitchen garden as well, you can grow the plastic for RepRap - that’s polylactic acid, which is made from starch. You’ll have a self-replicating machine making useful goods from a self-replicating material supply.”

And here’s his revolutionary parting shot: when the day comes when we can all use 3D printing to make our own, we will have less need for money. “Where money doesn’t flow, it’s very hard to levy taxes.” Vive la revolution!

• Roger Highfield is the director of external affairs, National Museum of Science and Industry

Printer Reliability and Satisfaction: Brother, Canon, and Epson Lead the Field

by officePROhub.com on 12/06/2011 - 01:12 am

Tags: Inkjet Printers, Laser printers, Printers

No one printer maker stood out in our survey of readers about their experiences with printer reliability and their satisfaction with features.

By Mark Sullivan, PCWorld

Our survey results show up-and-down results for many printer makers. Samsung received high marks for its printers’ reliability and copy speed, but poor ones for photo and graphics printing quality. Participating readers esteemed Xerox for its machines’ printing speed and network connectivity, but bashed it for their poor reliability. Only Canon, Brother, and Epson had especially strong showings in both reliability and feature satisfaction; and of those three, only Canon also graded high in service and support.

Highlighted in the three charts below are our survey participants' ratings of desktop PC manufacturers in three general areas: reliability, features, and service/support. These results are drawn from our 2011 Reliability and Service survey of some 63,000 PCWorld readers. The other product categories covered in this survey were desktop PCs, laptop PCs, tablets, digital cameras, HDTVs, and smartphones. For a closer look at the methodology we used in our survey to gauge manufacturer reliability and customer satisfaction, see "Reliability and Satisfaction: What the Measures Mean."

Notes and Quotes

The printers section of our Reliability and Service survey prompted some vivid comments from participants, and we spotted a couple of significant details in the data, too:

• In the category as a whole, 14.2 percent of printer owner said that they had run into a significant problem with their machine in the past year. That percentage jumped to 27.6 percent when we counted only Lexmark printer owners.

• Overall, 6.3 percent of printer owners said that that their printer had developed a problem in the past year that was serious enough top prevent it from working.

• "I've used Brother printers for over 15 years at my office. They are workhorses and last a long time. I very rarely have any problems with them." --Brother printer owner

• "Reduce the noise. When it prints, it sounds like a dinosaur eating a helicopter in my room." --HP printer owner

Brother, Canon and Samsung Tops in Printer Reliability

More than any other chart derived from our 2011 R&S survey, the one for printer reliability tells a story of extremes, with almost no middle ground. Three manufacturers (Brother, Canon, and Samsung) went a perfect four for four on the positive side, and a third (Epson) went three for four. Then there was a huge dropoff to Xerox, which totted up average marks on two measures and negatives on two others. The remaining five companies we charted (Dell, HP, Kodak, Lexmark, and Ricoh) finished worse than average on three of the four reliability measures. How did Epson manage to rate better than average on "problem on arrival," "any significant problem," and "severe problem," and yet reap only an average mark for "overall satisfaction with reliability"? It's a perplexing question.

 

BRAND	Problem on arrival	Any significant problem	Severe problem	Overall satisfaction with reliability
Brother
Canon
Samsung
Epson
Xerox
Dell
HP
Kodak
Lexmark
Ricoh

Better than average Average Worse than average

 

Brother, Canon, and Epson Owners Are Most Satisfied With Their Printers' Features

The results on our printer features measures show crests and troughs for several manufacturers. Brother and Canon had the largest number of positive scores--six out of nine--but each also suffered a setback on one measure (Brother went negative on "photo/graphics quality," and Canon followed suit on "printing speed"), which allowed Epson to match them on net positives by carding five better-than-average marks and four average marks. Xerox deserves recognition for its solid showing, too: better-than-average ratings for "network connectivity," "printing speed," and "text quality," with no subpar scores.

Only three vendors finished with net scores of negative two or worse: Kodak (with two worse-than-average marks), Dell (with four), and HP (with six). The cancel-out award goes to Lexmark, the only manufacturer to turn in an overall neutral score, which it obtained by combining five average marks, two better-than-average marks (for "operating noise" and "warranty"), and two worse-than-average marks (for ""photo/graphics quality" and "text quality").

 

BRAND	Copy speed	Design	Network connectivity	Operating noise	Photo/graphics quality	Printing speed	Scanning quality	Text quality	Warranty
Brother
Canon
Epson
Xerox
Samsung
Lexmark
Ricoh	N/A				N/A		N/A		N/A
Kodak
Dell
HP

Better than average Average Worse than average

N/A = Not available (too few responses to rate the company on this measure).

 

Canon and Lexmark Get High Marks for Printer Service

Only six companies received enough ballots to qualify for inclusion on our printer service and support measures. In that reduced field, we found two obvious winners (Canon and Lexmark) and one clear loser (HP).

BRAND	Phone hold time	Web and phone support rating	Problem was never resolved	Service experience
Canon
Lexmark
Brother	N/A
Epson
Kodak	N/A
HP

Better than average Average Worse than average

N/A = Not available (too few responses to rate the company on this measure).