Here is another example of expanding application of inkjet technology. Last week Hewlett Packard announced that it had used its ink-jet printer cartridge technology to create a patch that releases drugs through the skin in a controlled and painless way.

The company said it has entered into a licensing agreement with Crospon, an Irish medical device developer, who will manufacture the invention and make it available to pharmaceutical firms as soon as 2010.

Patches that deliver medication through skin has long been around, for instance smoking patches. However they didn’t work for drugs that can’t be absorbed through the skin, and could only provide continuous flow of just one medication.

The new patch acts very much like a ink cartridge that squirts different colors. It uses micro-hypodermic needles controlled by a microprocessor to deliver particular drugs below the skin several at specified doses and time. This allows for timing sensitive medication delivery, which means it can be used for the treatment of diabetes, cardiac disease or hormonal imbalances.

The price of the patch is expected to be relatively inexpensive because it is based on the same technology that has long been employed in HP ink cartridges.

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Researchers from IBM Corporation in collaboration with scientists from ETH Zurich Science and Technology Universityannounced the development of a new printing method that allows placing nanosize particles on a precise location.

The technology makes it possible to manipulate particles smaller than 100 nanometers, which delivers resolution equivalent to 100,000 dots per inch. Compare that to maximum resolution of 1,500 dots per inch of current offset printers.

IBM cautions the technology has many years to pass before any commercial application is possible. So far, they demonstrated the effectiveness of the developed method by printing an image of the sun. Back then in the 17th century, the sun was alchemist’s symbol for gold, so the researchers used 20,000 gold particles, 60 nanometers in diameter each, to create the image (courtesy of IBM).

This printing process is expected to have a dramatic impact on biomedicine, electronics and information technology, according to ScientificAmerican.com:

Still just a conceptual construct, the nano-printing process could be applied to biomedicine to help screen for diseases by graphically illustrating the locations of, say, cancer cells or heart attack markers in a patient’s body.

In the information technology world, nanoprinting could be used to achieve the controlled placement of catalytic seed particles for growing semiconducting nanowires. Such nanowires are promising candidates for future transistors in microchips.

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What do you think your inkjet printer can create? Pages of black text? OK. Documents with color graphics? All right. Photos of you having fun in backyard? Absolutely! Anything else? You surely feel puzzled, however an inkjet printer can do a lot more. And there are people who know what this ‘more’ is.

A UK start-up, Polymertronics, develops a method that combines organic semiconductor fabrication technology with ultra-violet (UV) curing techniques. Simply put, this means there is a way to print electronics on a variety on media including vinyl, plastics, glass and metal. In particular, using this method one can create embedded light emitting diodes (OLEDS) and touch sensitive panels. The crucial thing about the technique is that it implies using existing printing equipment. This automatically creates a sales market for Polymertronics products and makes them (products) more cost effective.

Printed electronics sounds exiting, but hey, what do you think of printed bones?

Researchers at the Tissue Engineering Department at the University of Tokyo Hospital have already performed several implantations of artificial bones in male and female patients, ranging in age from 10 to 54. The artificial bones were simply printed using 3-D inkjet printers. Actually, here is what that “simply” means.

Artificial bone is created in several steps. First, a 3D computer model of the bone is created using the patient’s X-ray and computed tomography scan data. Then, the 3-D model is sliced into tons of layers, and the data is sent to special 3D inkjet printer. The printer work similarly to regular inkjet printer, but it does not produce simply one layer of ink droplets on paper. Instead, it creates multiple layers by applying water-based polymer adhesive onto special powder, which then hardens. Repeatedly printing layers on top of one another, printer creates a replica of desired bone or its part, see photo (taken from www.pinktentacle.com).

Artificial bones are strong, light and porous; when implanted into body, they easily integrate with surrounding bones and get replaced by them over time as the natural bones regenerate. The researchers expect this technology to be commercially available by 2010. However, the printed bones are not yet strong enough to substitute weight-bearing bones, so don’t burst into carelessly breaking your arms and legs

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We are not afraid of “laser” in laser printers, because it is highly unlikely one would get burnt with it. Yet, laser printer is the device that may be a source of “phantom menace”.

A group of Australian scientists revealed that office laser printers could be causing as much danger to the lung as cigarettes do. It is all a matter of ultra-fine particles contained in printer toner. Lidia Morawska, a professor from Queensland University of Technology and one of the study heads, comments on the discovery:

Ultra-fine particles are of most concern because they can penetrate deep into the lungs where they can pose a significant health threat. These particles are tiny like cigarette smoke particles and, when deep inside the lung, they do the same amount of damage. The health effects from inhaling ultra-fine particles depend on particle composition, but the results can range from respiratory irritation to more severe illness such as cardiovascular problems or cancer.

The study was conducted in a typical six-story office building and showed that level of particulates in the office was lower than outdoors during off hours. However, during business hours level of particulates rapidly rose up to 500%. Sitting in an office like this is like being outdoors by a busy road.Further investigation narrowed possible sources of excessive particulates emission to laser printers. Having figured out the source of menace, the scientists monitored 62 laser printers including, for most part, HPs with a small number of Canon, Ricoh, and Toshiba printer. The monitoring produced these results: 37 laser printers didn’t emit a thing, 17 printers had high level of emission, while the rest of printers stuck in between the two groups. Yet, no clear pattern was found of how emission level relates with different machine makes, models, etc.

However, it was determined that larger amount of pages printed, as well as density of text and graphics on the page, increases the particulates emission level, since more toner is used. The age of the laser toner cartridge affects both amount of hazardous particles produced and their average size. The older toner cartridge is, the fewer particles it emits. This makes it sensible to use remanufactured toner cartridges for your laser printer and to ventilate your office well during business hours.

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Most of us have a printer that, of course, uses cartridges to print. No big deal. Sooner or later, those cartridges get empty and utilized. This is amazing, but with current level of environment care and protection, most printer cartridges end up in landfill. The share of cartridges that are recycled or reused in a way, don’t even reach 50%, according to a new research done by InfoTrends.

The notorious “razor and blades” business model of printer makers suggests selling cheap hardware and making up on printer supplies. That has little to do with supporting environmental goals, since such approach generates more and more new toner and cartridges. On the other hand, original equipment manufacturers prohibit third parties re-manufacturers in every way from collecting, re-filling and recycling cartridges.

According to the InfoTrends research, gigantic amount of printer cartridges are used daily, and both original and third party manufacturers are eager to collect the largest amount of empty cartridges possible. The two sides have different way of dealing with collected cartridges: OEMs recycle them; broking down into component materials, while the re-manufacturers refill and resell cartridges, at lower prices.

The research says, re-manufacturers are more effective at gathering empty cartridges:

Third-party party supplies companies collect 70% more empty OEM toner cartridges and 700% more empty OEM inkjet cartridges than the OEMs themselves.

Original manufacturers seem to be using recycling as a way to keep used cartridges away from being remanufactured by third-party companies, who would then sell them cheaper, thus reducing OEM’s profit. This is also reflected in the research:

Through remanufacturing, 3rd party supplies companies are able, on average, to reduce overall demand for new cartridges by about 20%.

Another thing that make reuse of printer cartridges harder is a vast diversity of cartridge shapes and sizes. Should there be several standard types and sizes of cartridges, like with soda bottles, reuse will be a lot easier. Besides, cartridges a re simply not designed for reuse, because every following cycle of use reduces the possibility of making profit on the printer cartridge. This statement finds the support in the research:

80 percent of re-manufactured toner cartridges and 86 percent of re-manufactured inkjet cartridges are thrown away’ because it is uneconomic to refill them again.

Moreover, both OEMs and third party re-manufacturers are not “designed” yet to reuse printer cartridges:

Transparent and public reporting of environmental performance was not available from several OEMs or any of the re-manufacturers surveyed.

Those who support environment protection unlikely to see the situation changing until printer makers shift to other business model and start to design printer cartridges for reuse.

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Printer makers aggressively advertise and market the printing devices they produce. It is a common sight when an inkjet printer sells for pennies, even in the red. Prices for laser printers and copiers are constantly dropping too, making the devices more affordable to increasing number of customers. Obviously, this is supposed to create a favorable environment for digital printing at home.

However, a survey shows that among 7.7 billion of digitally printed materials such as brochures, postcards, business cards, etc. in 2007, only 48% are produced at home. Compared to last year’s 64%, this is a substantial decrease. Surprising, isn’t it?

The decrease in home printing, in turn, caused printer manufacturers to drop price up to 30% on personal printers to make them more appealing to customers. Printer manufacturers are doing a great job convincing consumers to try printing their materials at home.

If you are a printer owner, you, probably, know that consumables cost can easily pull out the money you saved on printer. Inks and cartridges can match the price of good wine; photo paper prices easily catch up those of securities at NY Stock Exchange. All this makes home-based printing something distant from being cost-effective.

Ultimately, the increase in digital photo printing does not seem large enough for printer manufacturers to rest assured. It is a fact that although consumers are biased towards using their digital cameras, pictures are now often shared via the internet, instead of being printed.

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 When we speak of printer cost efficiency, first think we consider is user’s printing needs. If lots of monochrome printing is required, one would recommend to have a laser black-and-white printer. For occasional 2 to 5 pages printing at home, an inkjet printer would do just fine. Once we decided on printer type, next thing coming is price and cost-per-pages effectiveness of cartridges used. That is, how much you pay for a cartridge and how many pages it would print for the money.

Hardware issues aside, there are many printing tips on the internet from users, experts and even manufacturers on how to save ink and money: using separate cartridges, printing in draft mode, choosing paper saving layouts, etc. Google returns 69,900,000 pages for “printing tips”, just check them out.

One factor I’ve never heard mentioned is power consummation.

Darren Yates from Australian Techlogg.com tested home appliances and electronic devices to measure how much power they actually consume. The power measured was actual or “real” power used by device, standby power and what Daren called “apparent power”, the power to be delivered to the device so that it worked.

Among microwaves and plasma TVs, there were two devices that drew my attention – laser and inkjet printers. The former happened to be Lexmark E230 laser printer, while the latter was Canon S800 inkjet printer.

When in standby mode, laser printer pulled modest 5.9 watts, but as soon as the printing started, power consummation surged up to 699.2 watts for a second during each page print. The inkjet printer started at 1.9 watts in standby mode and followed by only 19 watts top in printing mode. Obviously, inkjet printers outperform their laser counterparts, if we speak of energy efficiency in printing and Darren Yates’s verdict is:

Inkjet printers use up to 90% less power than laser printers while printing but things are pretty much even in standby mode.

Something to remember when looking for a way to cut costs.

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