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.
False accounting? (Score:2, Interesting)
"about 0.3 yen a sheet/number of times of rewriting."
Correct me if I'm wrong but this cost assumes you don't need to keep a hard-copy, i.e., you're printing to said sheet 1000 times.
In other words, if you never keep a copy and always reuse the sheets you'll save cash... The ratio of sheets you wish to keep to sheets you consider disposable has to be high; why else would you print something if not for long-term reference?
Also, staples?
Re:Define "consumable" (Score:4, Interesting)
But now you can just file documents by date, and instead of buying new paper, just reuse the oldest sheets that have already been printed. This takes care of the document retention policy at the same time as making filing extremely easy.
Re:I've been in the copier printer business for 30 (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, I'm having the same problem getting people to give up a fax machine, because scan to e-mail is faster, and cheaper, but people say "we've always had a fax machine".
Sending a fax: (1) walk to fax machine, (2) put down document, (3) enter fax number, (4) press send, and done.
Scan and send as e-mail: (1) walk to scanner (same as my fax, printer and copier so at least it has a sheet feeder, most stand-alone scanners don't), (2) put down document, (3) return to computer and open scan software, (4) scan document, (5) enter name and location to store scan file, (6) create new e-mail, (7) enter address, (8) enter subject and body, (9) add attachment, (10) remember where it was stored and how it was called this time, (11) press send, and done.
Ymmv but for stuff printed already, faxing is for me the easier option! And fax is still more of an "it just works" type of tech than e-mail is, as strange as it may sound.
Receiving faxes otoh I do in e-mail. And if necessary print them out.
And finally businesses are still expected to have a fax. That part certainly is legacy, but also because fax is such an easy and simply to use technology. As easy as the telephone. And in ease of use that can not be beaten by e-mail.
Re:Define "consumable" (Score:2, Interesting)
Somehow, I doubt that "erase" destroys the previous version beyond forensic analysis.
Cost (Score:3, Interesting)
I keep having to do math to debunk so many reports. The page that uses .3 yen as the sheet cost does not take into account sheets that are not returned. They are calculating it as if it is a closed system where every sheet print will be returned in re-printable condition. Pages can be lost, damaged , written on, or stored and never returned. The true cost of using these sheets is as follows;
((purchase cost) + (replacement cost of non returned sheets))/cycle size
Replacement cost is the cost to replace each failed sheet (damaged or not returned) over the life of one page as follows;
(purchase cost * failure rate * cycle size)
Therefore with a purchase cost of 300yen, a failure rate of 10% (I am being generous) and a cycle of 1000 the cost per printing would be;
(300 +(300*.1*1000))/1000 = 30yen.
Even with the questionable power costs added that would be almost 4 times as expensive as plain paper.
Bump that up to a 30% failure and you get a cost of 91 yen/printing and 11x the cost of plain paper. To the "no shedding costs" comments; there is still a cost to erase the pages before they are returned to the printer for recycling.
They also do not factor the cost of collecting, sorting and cleaning the returned pages .
Another aspect not touched on is print speed. According to the specifications the printer takes 3 to 6 seconds per page to print. I am talking about the commercial printers not the desktop version. Yeah I am going to wait ten minutes to print 100 pages. That is very poor throughput.