If It Prints, I'll Let You Know

Developing and selling ink that is compatible but considerably cheaper than manufacturer-produced ink and cartridges is a practice that printer manufacturers do not necessarily encourage – but blatant counterfeiting of manufacturer products? Now that is an entirely different story.

If we consumers are being warned against using non-OEM ink by printer manufacturers themselves, then we would like to know exactly what is being done to protect our interests against paying good money for counterfeit name brand products. Recently, more than fourteen thousand fake cartridges were seized by authorities in the United Arab Emirates. The bust was a joint effort between the Sharjah Economic Development Department (SEDD) monitoring team and the Sharjah Police Department.

While the fact that these fake items were discovered is laudable, it is at the same time a cause for concern to consumers; how exactly do we spot a fake article from the real deal? What we would normally do is to look for the seal and the trademark, but it seems like even that is no longer an assurance.

The goods were reportedly found in a villa located in the Al Jazat area in the emirate of Sharjah – and they are all labeled with the HP trademark. Among the articles seized in the raid are almost two thousand HP stickers, more than eight hundred thousand empty HP boxes and their associated packaging, and more than fourteen thousand empty cartridges that, if the raid did not happen, would have been filled and sold as the original cartridges that some consumers generally prefer.

These confiscated items will reportedly be destroyed, and the captured perpetrators are reportedly being thoroughly investigated in order to establish their sources for these fake products.

The good news is that monitoring teams in the area have reportedly been instructed to step up the number of campaigns and to take full action against counterfeiters.

New Qubes (a solid crayon-like stick of ink designed specifically for the new printer) offer businesses a great way to make a positive impact on the environment and save on the cost of energy usage as well. As a document prints the sticks, which come in four basic colors, are melted and dripped onto the paper to produce the document. It evades the mess of several empty plastic cartridges and other packaging associated with the printing process especially for businesses who will find the new printer a great boon in helping them cut usage and supply costs within just a short time of getting the device.

The printer can be bought for $1,500 or leased for a few hundred dollars a month. Meters inside the machine can tell you how much and how often you print to keep track of usage another valuable green asset. It’s also a very useful printer as it offers many of the same options that an at home printer can, an option that is less often available in a business class printer.  Among its available tasks are typical printing, network printing, scans to email, regular scans, and faxing. One great feature is that it reduces the cost of printing color documents to a rate of 1 cent for basic documents to about 8 cents for its higher quality options, a vast improvement over other printers.

In terms of waste the printer and its qubes are a vast improvement! Most printer produce about 815 pounds of waste in a four year span, in the same span the cubes and printer only makes 88 pounds of waste. That reduces the waste by a huge 90%! While the qube came out early in the sprung it’s only now seeing real use across the US and doing very well.

The most annoying thing about printers is when you run out of ink. But as long as you keep using your printer, running out of ink is as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun. Most of us opt to buy new ink cartridges to get things up and running again, but those with tight budgets and the technical know-how about printers may opt to refill their cartridges instead.

The main thing that you have to remember about refilling cartridges is that it can get messy, whether it’s an ink cartridge or a toner cartridge. So make sure you wear gloves during the process, as the ink may take a while to wash and rub off your skin. Also, having a rag or tissue around can help you to quickly wipe away those accidental ink stains on your counter. Just make sure the stains don’t get to your carpet, though — as you can imagine, cleaning that would be a lot more difficult.

If, for some unfortunate reason, some ink did manage to get onto your hands, then wash it out immediately with rubbing alcohol. It would be really hard to take out printer ink once it’s completely dried up.

Thus, it pays to be extra careful in order to avoid the possible big messes involved in refilling. With your gloves, rag or tissue, and a bottle of alcohol around, refilling cartridges becomes less of a hassle and more of the money-saving activity that it actually is.

Along the lines of the current trend in printing toward more eco-friendly material options Hexion Specialty Chemicals, Inc. has developed and is offering a new resin platform for offset inks under its ECO-REZ brand. These new resins don’t contain phenol and have a 12% higher renewability level than all previous products.

The new product offers offset ink printers the ability to meet their requirements for such products while improving the green level of their production. Best of all the new products are usable under several different circumstances, whether they just need a resin, a dispersing vehicle or want to develop a total resin/varnish solution there are several options available to meet those needs. The new products offer a sharp print image during both high speed and long press runs, excellent water to ink balance and great rheological stability. It’s also available all across the world providing greener options for many regions that might not otherwise have access to them.

ECO-REZ technology offers the printing industry a cost effective and worldwide available product that offers truly useful sustainable solutions that still offer quality production for the industry. Having a product that can do both of these things is a boon that can’t be denied.

Xerox has developed a new type of ink that, made from silver, could eventually help build more flexible electronics. The ink can be used to print circuits onto films, textiles and plastics. While printing these things onto more flexible objects isn’t entirely new Xerox’s method (dubbed “silver bullet”) is and the fact that this new method is cheaper and easier to use only adds to the potential for the innovation down the road.

This new ink is made from silver and is capable of conducting electricity while maintaining a melting point which is lower than that of plastic. This temperature difference is a very important change. Most metals melt at about 1000 degrees c while something like plastic melts at a much cooler 150 degrees c, making it very hard to transfer the metal ink to the plastic before that plastic melts.  Xerox hopes this could lead to new innovations like printing out circuits as you would print a document and then folding that plastic for a flexible electronic device or in developing lighter weight and easier to carry e-book readers that can deal with more reckless handling than current models. Ideas like weaving circuits into clothing, lower cost RFID tags or more flexible road signs and solar panels could also make great new innovations that utilize this new ink.