RITI Printer Runs on Coffee or Tea Dregs
Oh yes! We have seen quite a few variations of printers over the past couple years and its numerable applications, and innovative designs that uses most improbable items to bring prints to life. This time round, it’s a printer that uses coffee dregs instead of ink to print, and it does not consume any electricity, just manual movement of the printer engine.
One of the entries into this year’s Greener Gadgets annual competition is this printer. It’s a brainchild of Joen Hwan Ju from South Korea and he calls it RITI. The idea of a replacement to traditional inks was invoked by the sky high ink prices and a love towards an eco-friendly approach.
Working of this printer seems not-so-complicated. It contains an ink cartridge on the top of the printer that needs to be filled with coffee or tea dregs. A manual lever lets users move the print engine/ink case laterally. This action inscribes prints on paper just as it would with a regular inkjet printer.
I love the idea of reusing my coffee machine remains in a useful and productive manner, but not really excited about the manual process. If Joen had fabricated an electric circuitry for the movement of the print engine, RITI would probably have been the innovation of the decade. However, with what we have, it reduces wastes, conserves energy and primarily saves users hundreds and thousands of pounds that one would lose on traditional inks. Commercializing this idea is huge challenge and we sincerely hope that it goes mainstream.
About the author:
Abhinav has been blogging about printing and related technologies on CreativeCloud for several years. He is also a project manager for a large technology company.
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