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Giant "Inkjet Printer"
mustrum_ridcully writes "For all you who don't like the cost of inkjet printers how about this printer that uses spray paint (courtesy of bbc news ). Ok it's not exactly what you'd call compact, but perfect for the lazy or wannabe graffiti artist." Having just finished doing a bunch of painting in my house, I'd like to have one of those machines drop down over my house, and paint via program - maybe I can use as GBA SP as the control device.
Let's make a giant Tux with it!
This would have instant cool uses for designs on bedspreads or sheets, custom car paint jobs, walls, etc. etc.
;)
Personally I would use it for when I'm building furniture (desks, tables, etc.) to give it a once over with some spray wood treatment or color.
The article is kind of light on details of sales and such though. Looks more like a hack job. But hey maybe it'll be the first printer to have linux drivers FIRST!
Get paid to code OSS
A rehash of the plotter, only using spray paint instead of a pen.
The artistic benefit of this new device may not be long lived if it does become commonplace, it would be like making paintings using a plotter.
Looks more like a plotter than a printer. From the sound of the article it holds one can and traces a path with it, rather than sweeping across the "page" and marking dots at the appropriate point.
Who the hell is that?
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
Or, combine it with random movement printing, and you could paint the Mona Lisa in a parking lot while doing doughnuts.
Well, it's just as well it doesn't use inkjet ink - what with it being 7 times more expensive than champagne.
Hmmm.
The machine I think should be better described as a wall painting robot rather than a "wall printer".
A similar thing would be to fit a spray can onto this wall climbing robot.
Surprising that nobody has automated wall painting yet, then we wouldnt need to have these plain colored walls anymore. All of us could have our favorite frescos. Just get me a large res. image of the cistine chapel roof!!
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
How long until Epson and HP start producing 20ml aerosols with chips in?
This story allready appeared on Slashdot last week...
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
it looks no more legible than that scrawled by the muppets near where I live on a saturday night.
Did any one else think of the Scene in "Demolition Man" With the Graffiti robot when they first read this news item.
:)
Maybe they can shrink it down in a few years
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
...a three-year-old with a box of crayons! And he'll even color directly on the walls, no paper needed! Maintenance is a little high, but rarely needs repair. ;-)
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
I don't get it
At
http://www.hektor.ch/
you can watch a cool movie of Hector in action, aswell as some technical information.
... and paint a big-ass "IBM roolz, SCO drools" in blue on the sidewalk, street, buildings, and just about everywhere.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
is posted here. Hope someone mirrors/bittorents it.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
With Ink More Expensive Than Champagne printing a wall must cost thousands.
Omnis amans amens
With apologies to those running this project, its website is at http://www.hektor.ch. (Someone say Last Rites for the web server, please.) There's some neat footage of Hektor in action. Unfortunate, though, that it's so slow; the video of it drawing some peanuts seems to go on forever, and most of the time you can't tell what it's doing. It's certainly interesting, but more performance art than anything else.
Can it print "Romani eunt domus" on a large building?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Super size porno!
...is wifi support and some kind of grappling hooks to attach this baby to any [preferably high-profile] concrete surface on the fly. this could very well be the evolutionary successor of graffitti [the medium, not the art form]. just imagine driving through the city at night and applying your own addition to some brain-dead consumer information billboards without prolonged exposure to the scene of crime. i for one have dreamed countless times about adding the simple character sequence '...not!' to quite a lot of messages i am exposed to on a daily basis.
--strangeloop
Check out STREET WRITER. It's a modified van that will spray paint entire messages on the street. :-)
Now this is a giant ink jet printer.
Ignore the clown - the http://www.hektor.ch/ link is correct, albeit in a shambolic state at the moment...
-MT.
Is still too high compared to a good monochrome laser.
Robot car poster printer
The article is kind of light on details of sales and such though. Looks more like a hack job.
I doubt that commercial uses were the designers' primary motives, given that the machine was the winning entry in an art contest. The clue was in the "light on details" article:
"The machine has already won an award at the 2003 Machinista media art festival."
Also, the article gives a strong indication that the designers don't seem to be commercial developers:
"Researcher Jürg Lehni came up with the idea for Hektor when thinking about novel ways for an artist to turn computer-drawn images into something more concrete.
He wanted to combine the precision of computer-generated images with the woolier outlines produced by spray paint.
Working with friend and electronic engineering student Uli Franke, Mr Lehni created Hektor. The machine suspends a spray paint using two toothed belts that feed through a pair of motors."
Again, the focus seems to be on art, not on commercial applications.
Additionally, you seem to have missed the links to the Hektor, Machinista and the Zurich Kunsthaus gallery, where another Hektor-implemented piece of art can be found.
Cunningly - some would say as cunningly as a fox, what used to be professor of cunning at OxfordUniversity, who is now head of the United Nations department of cunning planning* - these were hidden on the very same page, under the deceptive title "Related Internet Links".
Is it me, or even when they RTFA do people forget to RTFA?
(* You can't use the word cunning without quoting Blackadder.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I had considered that idea years ago, but never got around to actually building hardware. I'd planned on a paint tank (use that oldskool Tempra paint that washes off with water), a pressure source (like carbon dioxide), and a manifold feeding 128 electrically controlled nozzles. All this would be mounted on a frame that could be supported by a standard 2" bumper hitch (what is that, Class II? Class III?) The nozzles would be about 2" off the road, probably on some kind of floating arrangement. There'd be a small microcontroller with an RS-232 port, and a speed sensor.
You'd lay out some text or imagess in a graphics program, get out on the highway, and lay down road graffitti. "SPEED TRAP AHEAD" spread down I-85N for 200 feet.
I'm actually pretty surprised no one has built one yet. Although I'm sure the local laws have some idiotic provision against writing on highways with non-toxic temporary paint.
see the street writer at Applied Autonomy
Hoever, it being computer based, that implies that they have to be able to read and follow instructions, so maybe it's not going to lead to an explosion of mass-produced logos and cryptoc messages except in the upscale meighbporhoods where the graffitti comes from bored rich kids.
Billboards, usually along roadways, are printed by huge inkjet printers.
Go google for large scale printers, they exist. You get like 50 DPI, but for a billboard, that is plenty.
I can just see I-90 covered with official-looking signs proclaiming "IS YOUR WANG TOO SMALL? TRY OUR NEW MIRACLE DRUG!"
And what would we use these things for? Anything that requires a reliable, uniform, reproduction of text and images in really large scale.
So we can mass-create really large advertisements? Great. Just what we need. More noise amid the signals. And we wonder why people miss traffic/road signs, get into accidents, get lost, turn into obsessive consumers.
And what about artisan workmanship. Nothing is crafted from hand anymore is it?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
"What do you mean, you didn't know about the header page?"
Wouldn't that make it then become the "world's largest inkjet printer"?
[/. Editor's note: no it's not]
KopyKake
plain food coloring won't work, you need to use edible ink on your paper backed frosting sheet
Now I've got a use for all of that ink PrintPal sends me mail about each day. If there's one company I'd like to see burn, it's them.
Complete with pictures, a movie, etc
http://www.hektor.ch/
I'll piss in that one too...
/. just trying to find someone to rip on.
First of all, the article itself is barely 2 pages in length. I did read it. I did realize what they did and why they did it.
Second, what makes you think the guys wouldn't want to sell something like this as a kit? Is it too hard to believe that they would? Would it be so hard for the people writing the article to say: They just built it to build it.
Third, I'm glad you feel special that you can browse around
FU
Get paid to code OSS
Folks calm down. This is simply an engineering prototype. All engineers go through the rough initial phases where the thing they have designed is way too big, bulky, and expensive. This is merely a prototype and in no way represents the intended final product.
... maybe even some day in lots of colors.
I imagine in a few years the guys that came up with this will (after working with some of the top minds at Xerox PARC and IBM, and maybe a couple million dollars in VC) have this 'ink spraying thingy' small enough to fit on your desk. Envision having a little box on your desk that you put blank paper in, and get paper with ink letters and pictures out
Ahhh - dreams of the future.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Note to the inventors: If you get an order for one of these from Mook, please don't sell it to him.
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
I've seen a little truck that could be programmed with a Ti calculator back at H2k-N.Y. in 2000...
;-)
When programmed you make the truck go forward and it will write the message you programmed in... great for marking the streets in riots !
that thing could use font antialiasing
Pixation came out with a -real- printer that can paint on walls, buildings, etc. using compressed air and any paint that you can put through an air paint sprayer. House paint, oil paint, anything.
And it has been out for many years.
http://www.pixation.com/
Standard installation is 16 by 10 feet! It has 5 paint heads so you have black, white, cyan, magenta, and yellow. It is much cheaper than a wide format inkjet printer, and the ink costs -way- less than champagne!
OK, my birthday is coming up, who's going to pass 'round the office and get me one? ;')
And if your really looking for printer news, the first printer ever designed has finally been built.
Check out Charles Babbages printer on the same site as the other article. Hopefully THIS printer won't have to worry about the cost of refills.
This machine has been around for some time. http://www.pixation.com/paintmac.htm He calls it wirejet technology. Able to spray oil based paints. "Create" works of art on your living room wall.
And if you can't get past the JavaScript and the embedded player, here is a direct link to the movie:
_ Bb and.mov
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~ufranke/hektor/Hektor
A while back, IBM had a campaign where they were painting Tux and hearts on the curbs in several cities. As I can remember, the city council of San Francisco was not amused ... so there most likely and unfortunately seem to be laws against putting paint on the roads. This does not detract from the fact that this sounds like a cool idea!
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
But more relevant to the "instantly familiar" part is that when the New Left radicals started to idolize him, this one image of his face began to appear over and over on posters, t-shirts, magazine covers, everywhere, all variations of this one picture of him. It became a ubiquitous bit of pop-art for several years, and for probably 10 years or so, just about anybody in the U.S. could have seen a rendition of that one image, and known it was Che.
And it showed up in about a million different variations -- and apparently some of them are still around.
This is news? I remember visiting the Visible Language Workshop at MIT in 1983 and seing a far more capable device built by Professor Ron MacNeil. IIRC, they were programming everything in PL/1 in those days.
SIW
"I never metadata I didn't like."
This is really interesting. I wonder how hard it would be to miniaturize this technology to create normal sized ink jets that use spray paint. Very cool//
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Does it have a GPIB interface? ...had to ask. :-)
With a printer that size, might we start to see magnums of "ink"?
Ha! A self-referential joke! I'll just go lie down and die now - there's no way I can sink any lower.
I've been told that some of the large-format printing devices in use are essentially RGB raster graphic devices that have 3 paintball guns in a mount that scans across the surface in a grid pattern. The size of the paintballs is governed by the current pixel of the bitmap. Obviously, three nozzles each connect via hose to a separate reservoir of paint could be made to work as well.
I18N == Intergalacticization
[ed. : no it isn't]
it was a glorious idea, a glass door printing inkjet
the idea being, it would have an effective print area of about 4X5 inches, with the ability to do a dot a little out of that range in the corners, you hold the printer up to a glass door, have it draw the 4 dots, and then continue to hold it while it fills in the 4X5 inch section with ink. When that panel was done, you move the printer accordingly, adjusting the posiion til two of the dots of the corners overlap,-- tappa, tappa, tappa--
then it does the next section.. bingo- aligned, print the next 20 sq inches.
the kicker to assure sales, and yet remain liability free, is that it's also designed (ala APEX dvd players, which somehow always manage to be hacked to be region free) to accomodate a "leak" so that with a small modification (voiding the warranty of course) it also works as a inkjet tattoo printer.
suddenly, kids across america are snapping up the home tattoo printer.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Sounds somewhat like the GraffitiWriter & StreetWriter... Both cool-ass dot matrix style graffiti tools made by the Institute for Applied Autonomy. (Except the StreetWriter does it while you drive)
Be careful! Bears shouldn't consume large furry dogs.
Alberto Korda, the photographer who took the picture of Che Guevara that became an icon of left-wing revolutionaries and students worldwide, has died aged 72. Korda, whose real name was Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, suffered a heart attack while in Paris for an exhibition of his works. It's a great loss for Cuban culture. He was one of the top chroniclers of the revolution He worked for the Cuban newspaper Revolucion after Fidel Castro's forces took power in 1959 - although it did not publish the famous picture. Korda later worked as Castro's personal photographer. "It's a great loss for Cuban culture. He was one of the top chroniclers of the revolution," said fellow Cuban photographer Liborio Noval.
Two shots
Korda took the photo for which he will be best remembered at a memorial service in March 1960. Che Guevara stepped onto the podium and scanned the crowd. Korda snapped two quick shots, including the legendary one of the revolutionary with his beret, gazing like a prophet into the distance. Che is an icon of the revolutionary left Revolucion rejected the photo, instead running pictures of Castro and the French writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. But Korda recognised its greatness and kept the photo tacked to his wall for seven years, until an Italian journalist saw it. Korda allowed the Italian to take it, and when Che Guevara was killed a few months later, it was published as a poster in Italy. It immediately became one of the most recognisable images of leftist revolution, and has been reproduced on countless T-shirts, banners and posters since.No profits
Although Korda kept the negative and the camera with which he took the photo, he never received royalties for the picture that the Maryland Institute of Art called "the most famous photograph in the world and a symbol of the 20th century". He was happy to see it used as a revolutionary banner - but when a vodka company used it in an advertisement last year, Korda drew the line. Korda was Mr Castro's personal photographer He filed suit in London. "As a supporter of the ideals for which Che Guevara died, I am not averse to its reproduction by those who wish to propagate his memory and the cause of social justice throughout the world," Korda said in the autumn of 2000. "But I am categorically against the exploitation of Che's image for the promotion of products such as alcohol, or for any purpose that denigrates the reputation of Che." Korda won an out-of-court settlement of about $50,000, which he donated to the Cuban medical system. "If Che were still alive, he would have done the same," Korda told the Reuters news agency. Korda's other memorable photos include shots of the victorious rebels arriving in Havana and Quixote of the Lamp Post, which shows a Cuban man sitting on a lamp post in a sea of people listening to a Castro speech. He photographed Castro playing golf and fishing with Guevara, in the company of writer Ernest Hemingway, and staring at a tiger in a New York zoo.// The fastest Alt-Tab in the West
Two words, "Road Spam"
I was thinking that it could be used to paint directions on roads without putting lanes out of commision. For example, it could spray the words like "STOP AHEAD", "To W-50", "EXIT ONLY", etc. One problem is that it would have to dry fast. Perhaps a heat-blower truck can be just behind it.
Table-ized A.I.
And of course you could ask Microsoft how painting on streets would go over with local governments. They applied sticky butterfly advertising to the streets and sidewalks of New York City last year and then had to pay people to go around scraping them off when the city said no way.
Parking lots (advertising) and driveways (yard art) might be a better application than streets and highways for your bumber matrix printer.
Put a pivot point near one end of it and you could swivel it vertically to paint along a wall. Good for commercial advertising or sale notices if done with temporary ink.