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Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D.

Anne Marie's Chemistry Blog

By Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D., About.com Guide to Chemistry

Printer that Prints Using Coffee or Tea

Tuesday February 3, 2009
The RITI Coffee Printer uses coffee dregs or tea leaves to print documents. If you've ever stained your clothes or upholstery with coffee or tea, you know the pigments are sufficiently stable so that anything you print today can be read years down the road. I wouldn't expect the printing to be anywhere near as dark or crisp as what you'd get from a laser printer, but it's a nice green alternative for those less-critical projects. Another interesting 'feature' of the printer is that's it's hand-powered, presumably to save electricity. That guarantees you won't use it for printing big documents, but I think the coffee grounds ink idea has a lot of merit, don't you?

Comments

February 3, 2009 at 11:38 am
(1) Steven Mendes says:

I’m trying to figure out how the print seems to magically appear on the paper. Hand powered? How much energy do those servo motors really consume? I like the idea of using alternative sources for the ink, but why limit ourselves to coffee and tea? How about chocolate for Valentine’s notes, blue berries for 4th of July party invites, or blood for a macabre Halloween tome?

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