Soon the printer that erases ink instead of printing it on paper could be on sale. It is a green solution proposed by a researcher from the University of Cambridge.
To avoid wasting paper and provide practical solutions, the University of Cambridge is developing a prototype of a printer special, dedicated to green themes and certainly innovative.
The printer that erases ink on previously printed sheets is about to arrive, thanks to research led by Julian Allwood and officially presented worldwide by the important publication “Massachusetts Institute of Technology“.
The system is reminiscent – roughly speaking, if one wants to make an easily understandable comparison – of the technique used to remove tattoos from the skin: a laser beam strikes the sheet inserted into the “printer in reverse” and, identifying the inked areas, eliminates the micro particles of color left by the toner, literally vaporizing them.
It is a light of green color – coincidentally matching the color usually used to indicate environmental and ecological themes – that works in this way, allowing the recycling of already printed sheets.
This process – which in simple terms works exactly in the opposite way compared to a normal printer – can be repeated multiple times, so as to ensure real savings.
Researchers report that, at the current stage, the result is acceptable and guaranteed for between three to five times at most.
Beyond this number of uses of the system, the same sheet tends to degrade, apparently yellowing.
No problem: the saving effect seems guaranteed already at this level.
Certainly, a door opens that points straight towards an ecologically-focused daily economy which could truly be useful in offices and companies where heavy use of paper and printing is still prevalent.
The cost that a printer which erases ink could have remains to be clarified: it is too early to talk about mass commercialization, the research is still ongoing.
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