This topic may look dry for some future talk. It may look like ‘dry’ as it as not evolved a lot. Computer revolutionalized the centuries old printing technology but the output has remained as a printed paper. And there are less reason to believe that output may change much in near future.
Direction of revolution till yesterday:
Printer’s have become faster, smaller, easy and cost efficient.
Direction of revolution today:
Inkless printer:
Next era is of compact and multipurpose devices. Inkless printers exist today more in POC and less in practice. These printers don’t have ink in it but it uses special paper - papers which have special dye on them and they can be reused. These technology will make printers smaller with less moving parts which effectively increases the printing speed.
3-D Printing:
Don’t be surprised by this tile as they are not my imagination. They also exist in real but in POC stage. All above are wrongly put under ‘revolution’ title as they are merely ‘evolution’. This one is real revolution in printing. This will enable you tomorrow to print any model in matter of minutes then which are in todays world done in days.
After tomorrow,
Printer which are going to come after tomorrow, may be in next 75 years (earlier if nanotechnology makes breakthroughs). The 3-D printers today use powder spraying and drying them layer by layer. But future printer will make object by the material you feed. Main implication of these will drastically improve the speed and cost of manufacturing. But what I am interested in seeing is self upgrading printers. If any manufacturing defect is left in the printer, all you need to do is get upgrade instructions and give it to printer. Printer will remold itself to remove the ‘bug’.
