The Laser Unprinter

The standard printer colors are cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. CMYK. CRT/LCD colors are RGB -- red, green, blue.

The standard laser printer does not put a charge on paper, it puts a charge on a transfer roller that then transfers the toner to the paper. That toner is then melted onto the paper.

Kodak (and others), used to make dye sublimation printers, where a sheet of plastic with dye on it was whacked with a laser to sublimate the dye directly onto the paper. This had the advantage of being something more than the typical "yes/no" "is there toner there" question, and thus resulted in much better color reproductions. No dithering was required. The major downside, besides cost of supplies, was that you were left with a negative image on the dye sheet, just like the old plastic film typewriters had.

This system sounds like an incredibly wasteful and complicated process. You have to scan the paper to determine where there is toner and sublimate only those spots. If you miss by just that much, you'll char the paper and miss toner. If you put in a sheet of inkjet-printed paper, you'll burn the paper anyway.

Making/recycling paper isn't that hard. This is silly.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/LbPfH_FtiH0/the-laser-unprinter

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