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mugiyamamoto.com

529 pointsusaphp88 comments

At first I thought, and don't see why this couldn't be, a scanner that eats through documents and saves a digital copy of them. This form factor would make digitizing large sets of printed records much more appealing.

I scan all my receipts and incoming mail, I doubt you would even be able to make a stable "tower" of these things. It probably only works with new paper. One of my first thoughts was also that leaving the paper open in the free would result in a lot of dust collecting on it.

I've been moving to do the exact same thing at home, to get rid of all that paper clutter. If you don't mind me asking, what scanner do you use - presumably one with an auto document feeder?

Hopefully not the Xerox scanner that can alter the documents.

Really interesting as an experiment in industrial design and a conversation piece. As a viable product, I have some doubt: anecdotally, when I see people printing documents, they're in something of a hurry, and keeping the pile of paper sheets aligned would be hard. If you slightly knock the printer while using it, the stack of paper may tilt to a side. And having to keep the papers aligned would become an annoyance similar to the PC LOAD LETTER of yore. Handling A4 and Letter sizes at the same time may not be possible. I don't know how being exposed in a pile would affect the humidity of the paper...

I like how it makes me think of printing as a computing process, paper as input and printed page as output, but instead of feeding the machine with input, you "feed" the input with a machine and it gives you the output. If you extend the thought, it's as if the machine disappears, and paper (the input) is processing and then outputting (printed page) itself.

> If you extend the thought, it's as if the machine disappears

Indeed it does. How long was it after we discovered DNA that we discovered its 'machine', DNA polymerase? And in the end, what's more interesting?

Just to further your comment, the ribosome is another interesting machine that reads DNA and spits out little pieces of you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome

That was my initial thought, but in practice I don't think you'd really stack up the paper as shown in the photos. You might stack up a couple of reams, which is a lot lower than the stacks shown, and it might be possible to add some kind of collapsible/telescoping "corner plates" that would help keep the stack from shifting.

Yeah no need to unwrap the packaging of any but the top pack of sheets anyway.

Too bad it's a queue and not a stack. I'll show myself out now.

How is it so? I mean the last paper placed (on top) is the first to be fed to the machine, right? Fits the definition of stack as far as I can see.

Well, I guess it depends on how you insert new pages. If you remove the machine, put new paper and put machine back then it is a stack. If you lift all papers along with the machine then it is a queue. I believe second method looks more convenient unless you have a 5 foot of paper

This is beautiful.

I love the idea of an inverted printer, where instead of paper moving through the printer, it's as if the printer is moving through the paper.

This should be in MOMA.

MoMA's industrial design section is the only part that I remember years later. Gosh, what a cool place.

The Red Dot design museum in Essen, Germany, is also worth a visit, if you are ever in central Europe.

That's a very cool project.

But I wonder how it gets over the initial friction of lifting and pulling the paper through as it goes lower on the stack. Surely there's a limit after which, you'd need to remove the completed sheets off the top?

It looks like this is just a design concept (not a prototyped device). In addition to the initial friction issue, the printed page would not be able to be placed on top of the stack after it got too tall. So, nice looking, but unlikely to be very practical.

nice looking, but unlikely to be very practical

Bang and Olufsen sells a lot of home electronics that meet that description.

Maybe the way they are looking at it is like this:

    Top Paper
    1 ---------
    Gap Tray
    2 ---------
    Bottom Paper

Paper would be collected from bottom using standard scanner/paper style paper grabbing, scanned or printed to and placed in Gap Tray. Gap tray and entire top paper stack need lifted and placed back on support layer 1.

Pages would probably be upside down of their original unless they were fed back and forth.

All the paper would need lifted up, so there would be a limit, unless... a different idea would be the same thing along a horizontal track of papers.

I'm still liking the idea of a scanner shredder. http://designforpeople.ca/?p=215

To extend this stack design make it like an inverted shredder with a 5" shop vac hose connected to the top :P

Clever! A scanner that digitizes text as it destroys it can see some good use in a disposal/archival location.

The Gap Tray itself would still need to rest on something while it grabs the bottom sheet. There may be slightly less effort if it grabs the sheets from the side rather than from top/bottom. This way, has a shorter distance it has to pull through, but the friction may still be significant.

All this talk has really whet my appetite, though. Now I really want to see it come to life.

Clever until the scanner part breaks but the shredder keeps shredding.

Reminds me of Vinge's "Rainbow's End", there was a device which shredded whole books, then sucked the confetti through a hose that had tiny cameras in the walls, and they stitched scans of the original books together in software.

The more interesting question is how is it going to grab last pages from the table. "My printer was out of paper and dropped from the table again!"

Wait...what happens if there's a paper jam halfway through scanshredding?

What about the weight on the printer when printing a large document?

I could see a way where if the device was fitted with springs of some sort it would be able to "stand" or lift itself to prevent that kind of friction (of course there would be a limit to the size of the paper stack on top, but you could probably design it / fit it with springs such that the limit is practical (and far more than the amount of paper someone would logically use for this)

This is freaking beautiful. I hope it can work.

There has to be a limit, but in most real world use, people rarely leave tons of paper on the printer without collecting it (of course there are exceptions).

From what I can see, it looks like there are a series of rollers that rest on the paper, which allows the printer to pull the top sheet with little, of any, friction.

Little friction against the device itself, but not the other sheets beneath it. The weight of the device + completed sheets on top will add to the friction between the next sheet and those below it.

It seems as though a more practical (though perhaps more dust-prone, when empty) design would do this partially upside-down. Rather than allowing the printer to move downward though the paper, why not load the paper from the top?

One could set a full stack atop something similar to his current design using the rollers, and the finished pages could exit through the front in order to prevent them from building up below. The final roller could simply be removed and a slit added to the front such that the finished paper could exit the printer cleanly. A solid plastic sheet could then be added to catch the printed paper which folds back atop the body of the printer when it is being transported or simply not in use, perhaps to prevent the aforementioned build-up of dust.

This accomplishes Yamamoto's goal of removing the paper tray and simplifying as well as shrinking the design while avoiding the dangerous consequences of brushing past the printer while it is atop a high stack of paper.

Of course, none of this addresses a central flaw with his design. Even if two models are produced for Letter and A4 paper, there are still many other sizes in use, and there appears to be no easy way to adjust the sizes of the intake and output areas without the dreaded paper tray.

Technically you only have to adjust the size of the inlet and handle the rest in software. Since the paper would be comming down vertically, you can do mechanical centering akin to that used in industrial processes.

I like the idea, but doing so still adds a great deal of complexity to a supposedly simple design and adds a large amount to the size of the printer if one accounts for the use of legal paper. While I wouldn't mind settling on a standard paper size, the design still leaves a great deal to be desired. It appears to be more of a gimmick than anything.

This printer concept is also cool: http://renelee.net/arc/

Pretty cool indeed. The design process [1] is also quite interesting to read.

[1] http://renelee.net/arc/2/

The sooner the printer dies, the better.

Every company or process that makes me print something in 2013 makes me barf. Ever heard of web forms? Docusign? Email?

So, as beautiful as this is, it's solving a problem for 1960-1995.

Now, all I want to see in the printer innovation is some way to kill it off faster.

I still have paper copies of important documents from the 1980s. I have no idea where the digital copies from that era disappeared to.

Paper has its place; it's a fantastic archival medium.

I also still print out contracts to review them. They're easier to mark up that way, and I can focus entirely on the paper -- including quickly leafing through it, while comparing multiple pages -- in a way that I can't as easily do on the desktop.

Paper isn't dead yet; it still has the best UX available for many common use cases.

I have no idea where any of my important paper documents are from the 1990s. All my digital documents, though, are in my "Archives" folder.

This says more about which medium you and I pay most attention to, rather than how well paper archives.

Documents printed on quality archival paper will outlast digital media, if stored properly.

Digital media will outlast archival paper, if copied properly.

Of course you have no idea where your digital documents from the 1980's are. In 30 years you'll still have your most important digital documents from today though.

How? In Dropbox?

Dropbox syncs a local folder. So yes it could be one way to bring documents forward. The paranoid among us would probably choose an alternate method, I'm sure you can think of many.

Fuck that.

I don't really print much, but when I do, it's amazing that I can take something digital and put it on a piece of paper.

The reason that's awesome is that I can then hang it on my fridge. Or take it with me in my pocket, without having to worry about electricity. Or, you know, one of the other thousand use cases where a printed page is more usable, reliable, or feasible than something turing-equivalent.

Second that.

Paper and printing should die and will die. One day. But that day is not today because none of the alternatives are ready. Recently I had to work on a project that had a 500-page spec. All my screen space was taken up by code, application and command windows (and I had a very large amount of screen space). I tried keeping the specs open on a separate screen. I tried loading it to a Kindle. Nothing was fast or convenient enough. In the end, printing and binding the spec and keeping it on my desk solved the problem (I know!). The time savings for me and my team was probably worth a hundred times more than what the printing cost.

Also, beautiful concept. It takes a great mind to even think of something like this.

Exactly. Large specs are a use case I have run into a few times for printing. Anytime you have to mark up something super quick too, printing is the best method I have.

Be patient, the web is still too much of a moving target, on average people aren't saavy enough to even not fear computer interactions. I've seen people resorting to printing large spreadsheets on A3 paper and then scan through with a ruler, pencil and sticky notes. All day long (treehugger nightmare) since they're all updating the same "database" and need constant refreshed~ printed data to work on. And arguably they're 10x more productive this way than their current usage (copy/paste is jeet kune do to them) and understanding of the messy[1] computer world.

When the time is right, printing will shrink to it's minimum needed size.

[1] the computer world is a gigantic mess of papercuts, for the average human, nothing makes sense, the few time it did, it changed before they could rip the benefit.

Even if I'm a proponent of reducing paper usage and planting new trees, I can think of some cases where keeping some printed paper documents could still have some benefits even nowadays, IMHO.

* You need to travel in some places with no good access to internet or power source (as in a far far away country, or as in a local subway/underground of ill repute after 9pm),

* You thought it would be nice to delete all your original printed copies after using a JGIB2 scanner,

* You don't have the hardware or software to read your old digital copies,

* Some obtuse administration refuse your digital copies,

* Some benevolent but overly attached agencies, or some malevolent people, are trampling with your data in the cloud,

* A Carrington-class events occurs for real,

* And so on ...

but luckily, all of this never ever happen, right ? ;-)

As for the OP printer design it seems great, but when I see the 2 meters stack of paper in the illustration, I can't help but think that the printer will ran out of battery or ink before the middle of the stack.

This link is obligatory when speaking of the evils of printers: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

Either printer ink is made from unicorn blood or we're all getting screwed.

I think that a more disruptive invention might be a printer that accepts inexpensive ink in bulk, a printer without proprietary tiny little cartridges with electronics that lie about how much ink is left. I understand that we definitely need to print less, and stop using trees to print. Better quality paper can be made using flax fiber. I also think that having our own printing press is still a powerful means of spreading ideas.

I am slowly and slowly trying to go almost paperless, I hear you. And because We can now get rid of almost every boring administrative use of paper, the really intersting uses tend to stick out, and you start to print things you really wanted to.

Like printing papercraft parts, big photos of anything you like, personalized trump sets, kids stories you read at bedtime. Honestly there's a lot of uses I didn't care about until there was no need to print tax forms anymore.

Unfortunately, too much of human society is based on printed matter.

Take shipping a box, for example. You'd still need to print a label. There's currently no way that I know of to associate that particular box to the place it's supposed to go otherwise.

Disclaimer: I'm building http://ezsend.it to help people avoid the post office lines, and it would be a useless endeavor without printers :)

What about fax machines... I can't believe some companies (ahem, AT&T) still only accept documents / requests via fax. It's ridiculous...

Amen.

What better way to say "fuck you, your time is worthless" than to ask someone to print / scan / fax something.

OP has cool printer design though :)

Like the Facit typewriter that was innovated out due to the PC. They never saw it comming.

So based on this design concept I have to assume that they expect this printer to run on either batteries or wireless power of some sort. I don't mean to be too down on this as it is an interesting concept, but it annoys me when designers leave out things like power cords to make their mockup look cleaner than it actually is. It seems like a copout.

Another cool printer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baqDk1G9zUE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPhLFxRgfQ8

This is definitely cool, but it strikes me as a solution looking for a problem. Mobile printers that print out a sheet much faster than this are available at pretty low cost. I'm genuinely curious to hear why someone would buy this--any thoughts?

Spiral bound notebooks(as in the video), cardboard boxes, walls and other odd shaped surfaces don't fit into printers.

Would it require a perfectly stacked pile? It would seem annoying if you slightly bang in to the pile and have it be off balance.

Doesn't look like he accounted for paper that isn't stacked perfectly, but as in my comment above, it wouldn't be incredibly hard to incorporate that into the design.

I'd be knocking the thing over all the time I'm afraid. Would probably only use 100 or so sheets at a time, though.

All I see is a target for my stumbling clumsy self!

And a big cleanup job afterward.

This has a very "functional programming paradigm" feel around it.

Looks fantastic, but I wonder about the tolerance wrt paper alignment. I'm picturing my office where people usually rush up to the printer, grab their printout and bump the printer.

That looks really cool. But what happens if the user bumps the printer? The entire stack of paper falls over, and the printer falls to the floor.

What happens when you bump the stack of 20,000 sheets of paper in your printer's tray currently?

Not much. The plastic guides do a good job of keeping the paper in place. Unless you mean the reams of paper outside the printer?

Seems like it would be easy to make a model that still houses the paper to prevent tipping and would still allow for infrequent loading.

Even better, maybe turn it on its side and have it move horizontally?

I recall reading about this idea in the science-fiction role-playing game Shadowrun. It's set in 2060-2080, so technology is better in nearly all ways: including a printer design as described here. Very interesting, in the shadow of the total lack of progress in actual printer technology in the last few decades.

Is there a video of it in action?

doesn't look like it. I'm beginning to think this is all hype and no real show.

It's a design concept.

Seriously?

Another here's a CGed idea not even close to being implemented? (Which is fine except 99% of the time is because it's not possible/practical)

I know there's a claim there's a real version but not seeing pics of it? Or youtube?

When I saw the first image I thought it was going to be a scanner (for digitizing the information in the stack, then recycling said stack), not a printer. That would have been more impressive to me.

Does anyone remember dot-matrix printers? You also didn't need a paper tray: http://imgur.com/4tsSx2W

I wonder what if a laser printer could be feed like with the paper of a dot-matrix (with the tray helpers)

Wow. Just, wow.

The first words out of my mouth actually were "that's beautiful".

Nothing else more constructive to say, just wanted to leave kudos here for the OP.

can't believe no one has noticed that he made a real life turing machine (sorta)

Is this art or a prototype? I just see it on my desk tipping over. :-)

I'd love to see the kickstarter for this :)

Awesome project, cool concept.

I'd imagine the single challenge problem would be wind. If people walk by or the window is open...

All I'm thinking is:

What diploma?

All you have to do is click on over to the 'About' section!:

I'm an Industrial Designer recently graduated from the Ecole Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne (ECAL)

The professors are interior designers.

cool idea, but no video -- don't believe it.

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