Clean slate printing

Thermal process replaces ink in reusable paper technology

Coming to Britain later this year: the rewritable printer. This innovation suggests some smart lateral thinking at Toshiba: rather than chasing the chimera of the paperless office, they’re proposing the inkless one instead.

The Tec B-SX8R uses existing direct thermal printing technology to print monochrome words and images on special paper. When this paper’s reheated to 130-170ºC, however, the marks all disappear - so it’s ready for reuse. The printer is set up to do this reheating itself; it needs no consumables such as inks, toners and drum cartridges, and the paper can be reused 500-1000 times, then recycled with other plastics.

Toshiba claims it will bring the carbon footprint of printing down by around 85% and cut the cost by just over 50%. On the downside, the 20g glossy, plasticated paper must not be folded and at £5 per sheet it’s not the stuff for mass mail-outs.

The company has been a bit tentative about releasing the printer here in Britain, where we may have to wait well into this year, though it was already being used in Japan in 2006.

It is office practice rather than technical wizardry that will ultimately determine the fate of this approach, but the techies are sounding enthusiastic, if Chris Stevens at the CNET electronic product review site is anything to go by.

“Potentially it does sound good,” he says. “From a personal point of view I print a lot of things that I then throw away, so a reusable paper would be great.” -  Fiona Campbell

11 January 2007

Fiona Campbell