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New Type of e-Paper Can Be Used Up To 260 Times
joaommp writes "Taiwanese scientists developed a new type of film that can be printed on a thermal printer and erased up to 260 times. The boffins at the Industrial Technology Research Institute claim it as an ideal replacement for paper signs and posters. It does not require patterned electrodes. It is based on a plastic film covered with cholestric liquid crystal, a type of liquid crystal structured similarly to cholesterol molecules and can be erased by simply plugging it to a power source and an A4 sheet costs only US $2. It is expected to be available to consumers within the next two years."
Take that! Kindle!
We've had etch-a-sketch for years now. The most of the point of printing is so that it doesn't get erased.
...A manufacturer has invented a more durable buggy whip using exotic space-age materials.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The main point in having physical documents these days is the ability to have a physical copy or writing on the paper. Unless the paper can compete with the cost of single use paper for physical copies or allow for writing of notes it seems of little overall worth.
Because that would just be weird !!
The only time I EVER print ANYTHING is one of the following
- It is something I need to give or mail to someone else (assignment, form, etc)
- It is something I want to keep forever in hard copy (a manual, a picture, a diagram to pin up)
I don't see how having expensive, erasable paper will help either of these situations. The situation the manufacturer quotes doesn't even make sense - what is the use care for these paper signs you want to print off, and yet change all the time????
But is it the good kind of cholesterol or the bad kind?
Don't think so. Wake me up when it does full colour, with a proper white background and the same kind of dynamic range as old-fashioned ink on regular paper.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
What is that supposed to mean?
Simply because YOU do not use buggy whips does not mean OTHER people do not use buggy whips.
"Buy Buggy Whips" turns up 97,900 results in Google.
There are large numbers of people in the Northeast United States who use buggy whips EVERY DAY.
Seriously, what is your problem with buggy whips?
it's for things that don't matter if they get changed. Admittedly the actual article has some really stupid uses, but for things like job postings that must be posted internally by policy this would (possibly) be worthwhile.
For absolutely every other use case, this is complete garbage.
Did many boffins die to bring us this information?
Unless it can play angry birds consumers will not react favourably to it.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It seems a case of 5,000 sheets can be readily had for around $45 or less. That means at leas 222 sheets for $2.
As this can only be reused 260 times, that gives a rather small windows of savings. Seeing all the common things that can reduce/eliminate the suitability of paper for a second use (staples, holes for binders, crinkling, tears, etc) as well as sheer laziness and apathy of people...
Office managers probably are better striving for a more paperless office to save $$$ and environment.
Anyone else who read it as "buffoons"? I guess my education is lacking. Seriously though, who is going to pay $2 for a sheet that has to be erased after every use, with expensive electricity? What happens when the paper crinkles? Or when the printer jams Oops! Just ruined $50 worth of sheets, sorry boss!
To watching your cholesterol
...erased up to 260 times... and an A4 sheet costs only US $2
(1) You'll have a job selling a European pinko-commie A4 sheet measured in spawn-of-the-Devil millimeters* for US dollars. They'll give up their 8.5 x 11 God-fearin' inches Letter when you pry it from their cold, dead 3-ring binders.
(2) More seriously, that price has got to come down before it makes financial sense. Lets see - A4 paper... google.. about $3.83** for 500 sheets, so to break even you'd need to use each bit of ePaper, hmmm... $2 / ( 3.83 / 500) ) equals... 261 times! Oh, wait....
(* They say you can keep foldin' it and it keeps its aspect ratio. WITCHCRAFT I tell you!!!)
(** OK, I totally fudged this but its not far off...)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
At first, I thought it said a new type of toilet paper that could be used up to 260 times...
Even ignoring the issues with the required tech and the price, a problem remains: There's no way a sheet of paper will remain pristine enough to pass through a printer 260 times without jamming under any kind of realistic conditions.
I highly suspect that even under completely unrealistic usage conditions, it'll jam the printer after the 5th-10th time or so. Printers bend the paper and don't have perfect alignment, and that's got to add up eventually.
Besides, it's a thermal printer. Nobody uses those except for printing tickets, and for that reuse makes no sense.
Even ignoring all that, nobody is going to bother with figuring out what paper can be reused and carefully putting it back into the printer. If this invention has a practical use, it has to be a very niche one.
I could see this as part of a countries currency. Mind you not the whole note. But you could have a strip on the currency that gets updated with a new code everytime it hits a bank. Then replace the notes after the 200th use. Could be used for tracking currency and preventing counterfitting.
Well, I can see this can be used at some point as funky wallpaper and commercial posters. It makes sense of-course, the thing that would make it really stand out would be if they also developed a way to print on it without taking it down. So if they can have a printer head, that is the size of the sheet of paper itself, that you use sort of like a stamp. You select an image, touch the printer to the paper and it leaves the necessary impression - picture on the paper and you didn't have to take the paper down, that would improve efficiency and save time and money for the stores.
If not that, then you have to print the new picture and bring it with you, then you have to take the old one down, put the new one up, the amount of time it takes to do this goes up, where is the efficiency?
You can't handle the truth.
Members of collarme.com are all around the US and no, that site is nsfw
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"If you can blank it by applying a current to the entire paper, can you blank a portion of it by applying a small current to that part of the paper?"
Do you want print AJAX driven web pages, or what?
Here's hoping that one day my fellow idiots in the USA will adopt standard paper sizes... Along with all the other international standards they so blatantly love to ignore.
Scumbag poster
quotes A4 sizes
in US dollars.
Hint: A4 = euros, US letter = US dollars
What B.S. I can buy more than 260 sheets of paper for $2 (yea, I pay attention to sales and buy several reams at a time.) So why would I ever fool with this junk when simple paper is less expensive, and I can print it with existing technology, can keep it indefinitely (not going to do that with $2 a page printouts) and I have all the other benefits of normal paper (including color printing)? Seems like something for fools with too much money like Ed Begley jr, but outside of a few wackos who is going to fall for this?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Soon we will be told that powering all these ePaper displays costs more environmentally than simply using a new piece of paper, like let's say because generating the power requires resource consumption that has worse impact on the environment. Of course I'm being sardonic, because this HAS happened before, supposedly green technologies that cost more than they save.
Your math is bad, I don't pay any where near that much for ink/toner. I sometimes refill myself and save even more, but even just buying supplies intelligently I can print for far less than you. And lets not forget to factor in whatever is needed to print in sheets of the pricy paper, and even the extra desk space that would be needed for a second printer. No, this is just crazy talk.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
How is a sheet of PLASTIC covered in liquid crystals ever more environmentally friendly than paper???
1) Creation of paper uses trees, a renewable relatively clean energy source.
2) Plasic requires Petroleum.
Degradation of paper is simple quick and clean.
Plastic does not degrade so quickly or clean.
Just imagine either a landfill with 200 million sheets of paper or
a landfill with1 million e-Sheets..
come back in 6 months. Most of the paper has decomposed. 1 million e-sheets are still there showing how environmentally friendly they are.
Using this as changable wallpaper is a really awesome idea. If nothing else you could simply change the color of your walls to/from white/black in summer/winter and help augment your heating and cooling bills. Me? I'd design my own wallpaper and change it every month or so. Plus you could print family photos and artwork directly onto your walls! No more frames to square up every time your fat buddy comes over.
Cool post bro, highfive \o