A Printer That Uses No Consumables 240
jimboh2k sends word of a printer introduced by Japanese company Sanwa Newtec, called the PrePeat RP-3100 (a play on "repeat"). It prints on A4-sized sheets of PET plastic, and these sheets can be reused up to 1,000 times, the company says. The printer uses heat transfer technology rather than ink, and so has no consumables. There's a video of the printer in operation at the link. The PrePeat costs about $5,600 and a supply of 1,000 plastic sheets will set you back another $3,300. However, the company gives a use case in which a corporation saves $7,360 per year on consumables, as well as putting less CO2 into the atmosphere. So far the PrePeat is available only in Japan.
Re:Define "consumable" (Score:5, Informative)
These proprietary plastic sheets sound a bit like a consumable to me.
Yeah, they're re-usable. But if it's stuck in a filing cabinet then you can't re-use it now can you.
I've got a boss who prints crap out all the time. Just random junk. Instead of forwarding an email to me, he'll print it out and hand it to me. And those random bits of junk get thrown away pretty quickly.
I routinely have to print out documentation for various clients... Take it on-site with me... And after I'm done there, the printout gets shredded.
For non-permanent bits of information that you'd still like to take away from a computer screen, this could be very handy.
Re:Define "consumable" (Score:5, Informative)
stupid execs (Score:3, Informative)
All it takes is for one management-type to keep a 100-page report on her shelf to blow your entire savings for the year.
Re:I've been in the copier printer business for 30 (Score:2, Informative)
1. Put down document on printer/scanner combo device's page feeder
2. Type the email address of recipient on the touch screen display on that device
3. Push send.
Benefits aside from speed and ease of use are that now the recipient has a digital copy without having to scan it themselves and in my experience the quality is pretty much always better than a fax machine.
I know you said that for you faxing was the easier option, but I don't think gp was advocating the process for you, more for people who have a device built to handle that task. Just as I'm sure you wouldn't advocate fax as the best solution to someone who only had a hand scanner and a fax modem.