Hasta La Gadget!

Portable printers are nothing new, but they’re usually as wide as A4 sheets. Because obviously they have to accommodate paper right? ZUta Labs looked at the problem differently. The most important part of a printer is the part that prints, i.e. the print head. So they took that part out of a traditional printer and made it fit on your paper instead of the other way around.

ZUta Labs’ PocketPrinter is a small robot that’s meant to go on top of the paper you want to print on.  It uses omnidirectional wheels to navigate on paper, a small ink cartridge and a battery that lasts up to one hour per charge. You can send a file to be printed from your desktop computer, but Zuta Labs is also working on mobile apps so that you can wirelessly queue files from your mobile devices.

There are significant tradeoffs to its size though. The PocketPrinter’s pace is a glacial 1.2 pages per minute. Also, the lone ink cartridge means you can only print in grayscale. ZUta Labs is planning to make a full color model in the future.

Command-P a browser window and pledge at least $180 (USD) on Kickstarter by May 10 to get a PocketPrinter as a reward.

We have been following the Micro 3D printer closely since the project turned up on Kickstarter a few days ago. The project is for a very small and compact 3D … Continue reading

Many of us stock our photos only as digital copies, but a new company called LifePrint might get you back to printing photographs. The company’s eponymous device lets you print photos wirelessly wherever you are and makes it easy to share photos with other LifePrint users.

The printer works with iOS and Android devices and makes 3″ x 4″ photographs. You can print any image that’s on your camera roll to LifePrint, which means you can print the images you edited or downloaded from various apps. You can send photos to the printer over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or even a data connection through the LifePrint app.

For example, you can take a picture while you’re out and have a print waiting for you when you get home, or even have someone abroad within print your photo within a few seconds of capturing it. Couple that wireless capability with the printer’s battery – it can print up to 30 photos per charge – and you can even set up a mobile photo booth.

You can emulate LifePrint’s wireless features with a modern printer, a router and a bit of programming. But what makes LifePrint more convenient is the social network feature of its mobile app. It behaves much like Instagram where you can follow other users, except with LifePrint you can add the images of the people you follow to your printing queue. It’s a shame LifePrint can’t print out larger photos, because otherwise it would be a great way for artists and photographers to send free posters to their followers.

Thankfully, the LifePrint app lets you reject the photos shared by the people in your network without informing them of the rejection. You can also keep to yourself and stay out of LifePrint’s social network.

Take a photo of your browser’s lunch, apply some filters, and pledge at least $99 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a LifePrint printer as a reward. LifePrint will sell film packs in three variants: 10 prints for $20, 30 for $20 and 100 for $50. Shipping will be free for the $50 pack. A lot of consumers might be turned off by the price of the film, but I say that’s a plus. It’ll force them to think hard about the pictures they want to print. And it will give you a good alibi when your friends start asking why you didn’t print the selfies they sent you.

[via DudeIWantThat]

Last year we talked about the EX¹, a 3D printer designed to print circuit boards on a variety of materials, including paper. The EX¹ has great potential, but if all you want is to print is circuit boards on paper, the AgIC may be better for you. It’s a DIY kit that lets you convert ink printers to make them print circuit boards instead.

AgIC’s main component is a silver nanoparticle ink that’s very similar to conductive paint. You’ll have to manually inject the ink into an ink cartridge, but if you’re constantly making circuit boards that added task will be worth it. You’ll also need their special coated paper, and some conductive glue or tape to apply your parts to the board.

Printer makers must be seeing dollar signs right now. Pledge at least $299 (USD) on Kickstarter to get an AgIC DIY kit. Pledge at least $599 and you’ll get a ready-to-use AgIC modded printer.

[via PSFK]

Even offices these days would want to take the green route, as that is the right thing to do considering the rather limited resources that our world offers. Hence, the whole idea of recycling paper has been mooted for years now, and the office is one place where recycling paper makes plenty of sense. Despite the world taking on a more digital stance, paper copies of documents happen to be used still, and it is said that approximately 40% of these documents happen to be thrown away after being read. Apart from that, the ink used to print such documents are not exactly cheap in the long run, either. A bunch of chemists from Jilin University in China might have a suitable solution to this dilemma – by developing a printer which relies on water rather than ink to print on, while the paper itself will end up blank (and obviously, good as new) again after 22 hours so that one can re-use it.

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Printer Prints With Water Instead Of Ink original content from Ubergizmo.