A few days ago, we were talking about one of the smallest and currently affordable 3D printers – The Micro. And while all the attention seems to be pointed at the nascent 3D printing industry, we forget that almost all of us have a regular printer in their home or at office that uses plain paper. Despite the fact that there are more portable printers on the market, the current standard still remains quite big and bulky. But the guys from ZUtA Labs want to change this with their ZUtA Pocket Printer.
This Mini Mobile Robotic Printer is aimed at those on the go, who are either traveling often or have to work remotely. From the looks of it, this will be another successfully crowdfunded KickStarter project, as it already has more than one thousand backers who have pledged almost half of its $400,000 goal with 28 days to go. And there are plenty of reasons to love this device – it has a cute heart-shaped design and it moves on his own on any size page trailing ink.
The ingenious folks over at ZUtA have gotten rid of the entire device and just put the printhead on a set of small wheels and let it run across a piece of paper. Since it moves on its own, the devices comes with a rechargeable battery, an on\off switch and connects directly to smartphones and to PCs. And here’s how it works, the entire process being explained by the team:
The printer is activated by sliding a hatch at the bottom of the printer which will reveal the inkjet. The USB connection for battery charging is also located on the bottom of the device. The inkjet lasts for over 1,000 printed pages and the battery lasts for over one hour per full-charge. The first version will print in grayscale. Our printer is based on an omni-wheel system that allows it to accurately turn and drive in any direction. The printer was designed in a comprehensible manner in order to help the user place the printer properly at the top of the page and guarantee an accurate outcome.
This ultra-portable printer will come in Mars black and Titanium white colors and will be made out of Polycarbonate. The printer will be 10 centimeters high and 11.5 centimeters in diameter and will weigh about 300g. The single drawback is that it comes with a quite slow print speed at 1.2 ppm, which means that you’ll have to wait more than minute for a page to get printed. But the poor thing has to slug its way across the page, so let’s give it some credit here.
As for the print quality, it can reach up to 96×192 dpi but the final product will come with an even higher resolution. Don’t expect this printer to print multicolor, as it comes with just one black cartridge. Who knows, maybe in the future there will be such an option, but given its small size, there are slim chances of this happening.