Water-Jet printer saves ink, money, jungles & planet as well

Inkjets and laserjets are old. Say hello to the new water-jet printers that promise to save your ink, money, jungles (consumes lesser paper too) and ultimately help saving our planet as well. The water-jet printer is a creation of Sean Xiao-An Zhang, professor of Chemistry at the Jilin University in China and his team. He says that about a half of all the prints in office are thrown into waste bin after sing usage. His innovation will allow each page to be reprinted about 12 times and saving a lot of money in the process.


The trick is in the special dye that turns into color when exposed to a water jet. The print fades in a span of about 20-22 hours at room temperatures (below 35 degrees) when the water evaporates. The print however is professional grade and relatively cheaper, Zhang and his team claims. The cost of prints taken using the water-jet printer is just about 1% of the traditional printing costs for 50 rewrites.

But what's more exciting about this technology is that it works absolutely fine with your existing inkjet printer! No new hardware purchase is required. All you need to do is get the water cartridges and fit them in place of your inject ones and use the special paper for all your printing job. Zhang and his team were able to produce four colors so far using the water-jet printers: magenta, gold, blue and purple; however only one hue can be printed at a time; as of now.

The team is now working on a special technology that will heat the papers so that they're ready for reprints as soon as they're inserted into the printer. At about 70 degrees, the color disappears in less than a minute's time. Zhang said that the new dyed paper was very safe and he's committed to conducting toxicity tests to ensure that it can be made commercially available.

Source: #-Link-Snipped-#