Students of Georgia Institute of Technology has created a robot named PrintBot that can print out images of virtually unlimited sizes. On their site, Instructibles.com, they published a detailed step-by-step printer creation guide.

The PrintBot uses a printhead from an Epson inkjet printer (as it was expected to use it, the printhead, not Epson) and Talcum powder instead of inks. The printer is said to support wireless remote control and is based on iRobot Create, which, in turn, is analog of iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaning robot.

This device can perform on almost any horizontal faces, and the creators suggest using it for sidewalk painting and advertisement.

I wonder if this idea can be transformed for document printing. For instance, instead of paper running through the printer, a smal printing bot creates an image or a text line-by-line on a sheet of paper. Just like living pen. One could give it a ‘handwriting’ (as far as this term can be applied to a printer robot) style that could customly created and changed. Well, the sky is the limit to development of this idea.

In this video you can see the PrintBot at work:

Here is the results of its work (can’t make out what that is):

I really liked this bot. Hopefully, next thing they ‘teach’ it is to print on vertical faces and with use of paint.