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Printer It's funny. Laugh.

Giant "Inkjet Printer" 131

Posted by Hemos from the time-to-redo-the-house dept.
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.
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Giant "Inkjet Printer" More

Giant "Inkjet Printer"

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  • Can it run linux? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:03AM (#6382045)
    Let's make a giant Tux with it!
    • 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//

  • Uses (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Beatbyte ( 163694 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:04AM (#6382051) Homepage
    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! ;)
    • This would have instant cool uses for designs on bedspreads or sheets, custom car paint jobs, walls, etc. etc.

      Uhh.. you're forgetting the obvious:

      Painting the sides of train cars.
      • I work right in between a large train yard and several train lines. Often there are numerous cars just sitting around and the majority of them have been "decorated". Some look quite crappy, but others look excellent and a work of art (of sorts). Anyone know how long it takes someone good with a can of spray paint to finish a work of art [graffiti.org]?

    • When you RTFA, remember to R T F A... (Score:5, Informative)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @09:13AM (#6382321) Journal
      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 [hektor.ch], Machinista [machinista.ru] and the Zurich Kunsthaus [kunsthaus.ch] 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.)
      • Well, I don't think he's out of bounds saying the article is "info-light" when it is. What kind of an idiot editor would let an article go to press with the title "GIANT PRINTER GOES ON SHOW: Two Swiss researchers have created what could be the largest portable ink jet printer in the world" without saying anywhere in the artile how BIG the damn thing is? D'oh.

        And yeah, re the "profit motive" I'm guessing from the choice of demo picture of **Che Guevara** that commercial considerations weren't first on t
      • I'll piss in that one too...

        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 /. just trying to find someone to rip on.

        FU
        • 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.

          Hmmm. Perhaps you're not familiar with the BBC News site. All the articles are of that length. They are news articles, not technical reviews. Perhaps you've got the site confused with ArsTechnica or something.

          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 writin
    • This would have instant cool uses for designs on bedspreads or sheets, custom car paint jobs, walls, etc. etc.

      You'd have a problem using this device on a car - it's only for painting in 2D. Cars are 3D - just overlaying a flat image won't work. But if you added a third axis of movement and a ratational axis, ie have a X-track on the ceiling so the rig can move to any location in the horizontal plane, combined with up & down and spinning round, then you could paint on just about anything.

      Obviously yo

      • You don't need 3D software, you need a 2D picture and a 3D 'surface map' of the car. (think pictures on the side panel, not whole-body work, which is a whole lot more effort). Create the image, and modify the Z to match the car. Or, if you use a 'feeler', you just need the X and Y (drop Z to zero until feeler triggers)

        It's not that hard to build. We use a very similar device here where I work. (smaller scale, of course). There's 2 ways to do it. One, use a stepper motor. This is the better, more ex

    • 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.

      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 hav

  • Looks like... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by splerdu ( 187709 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:05AM (#6382060)
    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.
    • Where is the problem? The art lies not in the images these guys paint but in the invention they have made. The invention itself is unique and stays that - no matter how often it is duplicated.
      Beyond that, I admire the simlicity of the construction. Two controlled strings and gravity is all these guys need to build a highly versatile Plotter. Compare that to commercial products!
      • Not sure they've invented anything. They've _built_ a vertical plotter.

        Vertical plotters (even large scale & using spray paint) aren't new. I built one for a student engineering project, >15 years ago, and it wasn't new then (1m square, accurate to a couple of mm, spray paint, colour, etc.).

        A couple of bits of string, a couple of motors and a print head is basically all any plotter is - the hard (expensive) bit is getting accurate "strings" and motors and frame.

        They've thrown away the frame by req
        • I thought there was major differences in how plotters/printers get the ink to the paper.

          Plotters drag a pen across the paper so perfect lines are drawn. That's why they're used extensively for CAD. You'll never see a jaggie line on a plotter.

          Printers use dots and patterns to recreate an image. Sometimes they SMASH a print head through a ink soaked cloth, or they MELT a combination of iron oxide and plastic to the paper, or they SQUIRT ink. That's why you see a lot more pictures created with printers.
          • I'd still regard this as a plotter - I don't think the critical difference is how the ink (or whatever) gets onto the surface, but rather how lines are drawn.

            As you say, a plotter draws lines, rather than dots (vector vs. raster) - and I think this is the critical difference. It doesn't matter that it is using a spray, it is still spraying lines (some of the images on the site are half-tone type images but they still look to be made up of lines). Of course you can draw a raster image with a vector plotter
    • It's been done better a long time ago too - I remember seeing a device in the "Asian Sources" catalogue (basically an importers directory) for a very similar device that applied bitmaps to a wall or the side of a van using red green and blue paint mixed on the fly. This was well over 10 years ago.

    • Well... it has already made an impact, making people think of other ways to create art. It reminds me a lot of Duchamp, because it presents a different way of dealing with things. Long term impact I believe has to be measured by whether or not other artists take this idea and try things that the creators of this had never thought of. And btw... the plotter paintings I've seen look kinda cool... however most of them are just from the plotter getting jammed and then the ink jet cartiridges making cool design

  • Plotter not printer (Score:4, Informative)

    by jarran ( 91204 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:05AM (#6382061)
    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.

  • Some Images are Instantly Familiar (Score:3, Funny)

    by notestein ( 445412 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:05AM (#6382063) Homepage Journal
    Some Images are Instantly Familiar


    Who the hell is that?

  • This would be really sweet mounted on a car bumper (Score:4, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:06AM (#6382064)
    Two words, "Road Spam"

    Or, combine it with random movement printing [slashdot.org], and you could paint the Mona Lisa in a parking lot while doing doughnuts.

    • Re:This would be really sweet mounted on a car bum (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jcwren ( 166164 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @09:18AM (#6382338) Homepage
      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.
      • 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.

        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 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
    • see the street writer at Applied Autonomy [appliedautonomy.com]
    • I can just see I-90 covered with official-looking signs proclaiming "IS YOUR WANG TOO SMALL? TRY OUR NEW MIRACLE DRUG!"
    • 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.

  • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Wow (Score:1, Funny)

      by ajs318 ( 655362 )
      If you think inkjet ink is too expensive, try refilling your old inkjet cartridges with red, yellow and blue food colouring. Then get some edible rice paper {or just roll out some sugar icing reeeeeeally thin} and you should be able to print photo birthday cakes!

      Disclaimer: you alone are responsible for the consequences of your actions.
      • KopyKake [kopykake.com]
        plain food coloring won't work, you need to use edible ink [kopykake.com] on your paper backed frosting sheet [kopykake.com]
        • Right ..... I sort of guessed it probably wouldn't work too well, otherwise obviously someone'd've done it by now just for the sake of saving a bob or two.

          Mind you, given how little ink there actually is in a printout, I would be very surprised if there was any chemical you could use that would be dangerous in the amounts you would be likely to ingest over the course of a slice of birthday cake. Methinks some experiments are in order.

          A few days later in an underground car park:
          Hello, little boy. Wo

  • Robot? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by watzinaneihm ( 627119 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:07AM (#6382069) Journal
    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 [irobot.com].
    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!!

  • Oh just great... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:08AM (#6382074)
    How long until Epson and HP start producing 20ml aerosols with chips in?
  • This story allready appeared on Slashdot last week...

  • Demolition Man. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Deathlizard ( 115856 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:12AM (#6382089) Homepage Journal
    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 :)
  • ...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. ;-)

  • Site of Hector (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tege ( 687436 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:19AM (#6382112)
    At

    http://www.hektor.ch/

    you can watch a cool movie of Hector in action, aswell as some technical information.

  • Take it to SF... (Score:4, Funny)

    by SkewlD00d ( 314017 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:20AM (#6382117)
    ... and paint a big-ass "IBM roolz, SCO drools" in blue on the sidewalk, street, buildings, and just about everywhere.

  • Video of hektor in action (Score:3, Informative)

    by sanermind ( 512885 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:21AM (#6382120)
    is posted here. [quick-line.ch] Hope someone mirrors/bittorents it.

  • Ink costs (Score:3, Funny)

    by danormsby ( 529805 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:25AM (#6382142) Homepage
    With Ink More Expensive Than Champagne [slashdot.org] printing a wall must cost thousands.

  • Hektor (Score:2, Informative)

    by UncleOzzy ( 158525 )

    With apologies to those running this project, its website is at http://www.hektor.ch [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.

  • Possible use (Score:2, Funny)

    by Mr2cents ( 323101 )
    Can it print "Romani eunt domus" on a large building?
    • What's this, then? 'Romanes Eunt Domus'? 'People called Romanes they go the house'?
    • This might be a brilliant classical reference, except that since both Hektor and Astyanax died at the end of the Trojan wars, I'm not quite sure how the "Romani" fits. Troiani? But why call it Hektor anyway? To be properly corny, it should be called something like "Canaletto."

      Work is too boring today, but at least I didn't moderate this overrated.

      • This might be a brilliant classical reference, except that since both Hektor and Astyanax died at the end of the Trojan wars...

        But for those that were unaware- it is a brilliant, er... that is, at least marginally luminant, Monty Python [stone-dead.asn.au] reference.
        Right now, write it a hundred times!
    • What's this then? Romanes eunt domus. People called Romanes they go the house?

  • Excellent :) (Score:3, Funny)

    by killermal ( 545771 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:34AM (#6382177)
    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

  • bah - that think is puny!! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by afxgrin ( 208686 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:35AM (#6382186)
    Check out STREET WRITER [appliedautonomy.com]. It's a modified van that will spray paint entire messages on the street. :-)

    Now this is a giant ink jet printer.
  • Is still too high compared to a good monochrome laser.
  • As if my neighborhood doesn't have enough problems with gang graffitti they have to go and invent this thing.

    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.
    • Yes, I saw a tv report on these something like 15 years ago. They had a big sheet of vinyl on a drum, and a printhead that consisted of computer-controlled airbrush pens that slowly crept down the drum as the drum rotated. The could print photorealistic (from the right distance) stuff at a fraction of the setup time that it normally took.
  • 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?

  • overheard in SF subway (Score:3, Funny)

    by rifftide ( 679288 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @10:05AM (#6382553)
    "What do you mean, you didn't know about the header page?"
  • 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.

  • Official Site (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Macblaster ( 94623 )
    Complete with pictures, a movie, etc
    http://www.hektor.ch/ [hektor.ch]
  • Note to the inventors: If you get an order for one of these from Mook [thepittsburghchannel.com], please don't sell it to him.
  • 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 ! ;-)

  • Already been done, years ago, only for real (Score:3, Informative)

    by AlienRelics ( 582327 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @12:18PM (#6383450)

    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/ [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? ;')

  • More Printer News (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PetoskeyGuy ( 648788 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @12:20PM (#6383465)
    And if your really looking for printer news, the first printer ever designed has finally been built.

    Check out Charles Babbages printer [bbc.co.uk] on the same site as the other article. Hopefully THIS printer won't have to worry about the cost of refills.
  • 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
  • With a printer that size, might we start to see magnums of "ink" [slashdot.org]?

    Ha! A self-referential joke! I'll just go lie down and die now - there's no way I can sink any lower.
  • It's a regular industry. Check out this site [printsystemsusa.com] for example. Note that they do full color. Their specs page lists the preferred Macintosh file formats they accept.

    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

  • I was once inspired with the creation of a printer.
    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 co

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