– Printing with light (in more ways than one)
One ‘emerging’ printing technology that has been opening up new possibilities for printer manufacturers is photonics, this being a method of ‘printing with light’. If you’re thinking that this concept sounds familiar to you, then you’d be correct, because photonics is actually the driving force behind laser printing technologies, which printer enthusiasts like us know have been around for decades now.
What new capabilities will photonics provide to future printer users, however? How about the ability to place anti-forgery watermarks on your print jobs? Printer manufacturers are currently dabbling with photonic printing techniques with the end goal of developing ‘invisible printing’ capabilities on home and office printers. The ability to print documents by using ink alongside transferring branded watermarks onto the paper itself via laser printing technologies essentially ensures a business can protect itself against forgery and authenticate their own printed documents with ease.
– Cleaner, greener, and more precise ink tank printers
Whilst ink tank printers are more expensive than traditional inkjet printers, their highly dense replacement ink bottles are able to provide printer users with a substantially higher page yield when compared to replacement cartridges for inkjet printers. There are literally thousands of pages between the page yields of inkjet and ink tank printers. What this means is that printer users or office spaces with higher frequency printing needs will be able to save potentially hundreds if not thousands of dollars on replacement ink in the long term if they opt for a eco-friendly ink tank printer over a traditional cartridge printer.
Alongside this, it’s highly likely that printer manufacturers will continue prioritising sustainability in the design and production of future printer models and printer supplies. HP have made it their mission to promote a circular economy amongst HP printer users, encouraging them to recycle printer cartridges once they’ve been depleted as well as using recycled materials in the production of their own printer models wherever possible.
– Printers & the IoT
Although printers themselves have continued to be present in many professional spaces across the globe, the quantity of printing machines that can be found in each office space is well and truly on the decline. There are two particularly notable reasons for this, with the first of course being that many business owners have been making a conscious effort to cut back on their organisation’s consumption of paper and printer supplies. Less print jobs means less lengthy printing queues, and as such, investing in multiple printers as a means of providing additional printing queues begins to feel somewhat frivolous.
The second reason that more offices are opting for just one office printer over multiple printers is simply because with digital printing technologies, the physical queue for your office printer has ceased to exist. With wireless printing capabilities becoming a fixture of virtually all modern multifunction printers, it’s becoming commonplace for printer users to take advantage of cloud-based printing via their office Wi-Fi network or even via mobile apps.
– Innovations to expect in the realm of 3D printing
And last but not least, a printing technology that many of you may be anticipating experimenting with yourselves is of course, 3D printers. This technology holds immense potential to revolutionise multiple industries, including production and manufacturing as well as construction!
We’ve already seen highly ambitious projects across the globe where engineers have successfully created fully 3D printed homes that can actually withstand extreme elements as well as natural disasters like earthquakes. There are implications with 3D printing replacing labour in the construction industry, however, and as such, it’s likely that this transition will be more gradual than we think, as will the development and production of larger, commercial 3D printer models.



