Random Movement Printing Technology

mszeto writes "For all those gadget lovers out there, here is a neat one. It's the worlds smallest printer[ed. note: no it isn't], and is Bluetooth enabled. Rub it over the page to print! Here are some more articles about it:"

World's smallest? I'd argue that....

[Bowie J. Poag]

..When I used to work for the Chemistry Department here at the local U, I got to listen in on alot of the conversations the chem geeks had about emerging technologies. One of them was a new form of electron microscopy..err, well maybe not *electron* microscopy specifically, but, a device for visualizing atomic-scale structures, and "printing" them.

The "head" of this thing (a nanoprinter?) used the vibrations of nearby atoms to move...The vibrations were tracked by a controller of some sort, and if the head was bouncing around at just the right angle, they'd "print" an atom onto a surface. I was told this was how they made those famous pictures where individual atoms could be precisely lined up on a surface to show letters or numbers.. I remember IBM doing this sort of thing with Xenon atoms back in the late 80's or early 90's.

So, nyah. WOrld's smallest printer my ass! :) I've seen atomic printers, baby!

Re:How it knows where the printhead is...

[Moofie]

Well, mine does a pretty good job of tracking velocity and position changes as long as it's touching my mouse pad. You know, sorta like this printer would need to.

But, hey, maybe yours works differently.

Re:World's smallest? I'd argue that....

[nhaze]

Yeah Duke's done a bunch of work along those lines.
http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jliu/labgroup/research.h tml
scroll down to 2. AFM "Dip-Pen" Nanolithography

Re:Michael, You Don't Know Shit...

[ldspartan]

Hah, you think he's a dick now, have you read about what he did before joining /. [sethf.com]?

Re:How does it work?

[onco_p53]

And the Flash is a FAKE! look carefully and you can see the text appear before the device gos over it.

We admit it is mostly vapor at the moment...

[dbc]

Quoting company representative: "We are expecting the first RMPT based printer products to be launched on the market early 2005"

This is not real yet. These guys are still pulling back the foreskin of technology. Call me back when it is on the shelf at Fry's.

Re:Is there a limitation on speed?

[Greger47]

I've actually played with one of these printers at an exhibition in Sweden over a year and a half ago.

You could swipe it around in about the same speed as you would an ordinary mouse. To fast and the output got lighter bacause of increased distance between the dots (it was possible to go back and "fill in" color to get dark output again).

The quality of the output was somewhere bewteen a matrix printer and an inkjet.

It was also a tad large, maby 3 times the volume of a regular mouse.

Ofcourse I expect them to have improved it since then, and if thay arn't going to introduce it on the market untill 2005 I guess it comes with a built in coffe machine by then...

Re:World's smallest? I'd argue that....

[polished look 2]

Here are some images [ibm.com] at IBM of tiny drawings.

RTFL: It shows actual printouts too

[Mongoose]

http://www.pdacortex.com/printdreams.htm