Inkjet & Digital Printing
EFI says: Just … Print it
Monday 01. November 2010 - Imagine you want to visit a friend of a family member. You are ready to go out, but wait - haven't you forgotten something? Keys, wallet, passport, .... a present for the host? Oh - that's what you have forgotten! What now - all shops are closed.
By Sabine A Slaughter
Imagine you want to visit a friend of a family member. You are ready to go out, but wait – haven’t you forgotten something? Keys, wallet, passport, …. a present for the host? Oh – that’s what you have forgotten! What now – all shops are closed.
EFI’s newest development might be the answer to all your troubles – a 3D inkjet printer that instantly prints the flowers you’ve forgotten to buy. But won’t the host discover that they have just been printed? Well, not according to EFI.
This new 3D-printer is not just anything that nowadays is called a 3D printer. No, it is special insofar as it doesn’t use any normal ink or sediment in order to create your flowers.
When recently the MIT’s Nocera Lab announced that a team of researchers has developed a practical artificial leaf that can turn sunlight and water into energy as efficiently as the real thing has long been a Holy Grail of chemistry, and researchers at MIT may have finally done it, the EFI research team got interested. At the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society the researchers led by Dr. Daniel Nocera claimed that they have created an artificial leaf made from stable inexpensive materials.
That leaf however doesn’t look like a normal leaf as it is made from silicon, electronics and various catalysts that spur chemical reactions within the device, although it inputs and outputs the same. It uses sunlight to break water into hydrogen and oxygen which can then be used to create electricity in a separate fuel cell. When these artificial leaves are placed in a gallon of water and left in the sun, they could be providing a home in the developing world with basic electricity, says Dr. Nocera. Photosynthesis has been achieved.
EFI’s research team around took this further. The developed a 3D printer and, more importantly, a special ink that consists of plant DNA as well as the plants’ natural fibers. First of left in a Petri dish, some growth protein added and then transferred to bigger laboratory reservoirs for duplication, this ink can actually be inkjetted. In combination with the revolutionary 3D printer from EFI thus fresh and living plants that achieve photosynthesis are created.
“One of the problems we encountered was the implementation of the building blocks of the artifical leaves into the ink. Once we solved that it has been only a question of time until we could put the finishing touches to our prototype 3D printer. It achieves a maximum resolution of up to 9600 dpi enabled by the newly developed printheads from a well known inkjet printhead manufacturer. So far we have printed marguerites, roses, even daffodils and some other flowers. We always have to wait for decoding of a plants DNA by scientists in order to be able to develop suitable ink. All you have to do now whenever you are in need of a bouquet of flowers, is to go to your printer and .. just … print it – and they look and feel just like natural grown flowers. Currently we are working on developing some ink for potted plants that will be more sustainable in the long term. We expect to bring this 3D printer to market soon. Visit us at Fespa Digital in Hamburg and you will see the results for yourself”, says a proud Mr. Ichi April, teamleader from the EFI research team.