Samsung shows off Origami printer made from cardboard

Scorpus

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In their latest bout of innovation, Samsung has decided to tackle the design of the home-office printer. With an aim of simplifying the manufacturing process and lowering costs for consumers, Samsung has unveiled a range of unusual printer designs, the most interesting of which is perhaps the Origami.

The latter features two pieces of corrugated cardboard that are folded into a box-like shape, which is then used to house a compact printer core. The idea is that this printer housing can be recycled once the printer has run its course, reducing waste material after it has been thrown away. The remarkably cool design is also fire and water resistant, according to Samsung, which should help improve the printer's durability.

Another one of Samsung's innovative designs is called Clip, a printer shell similar to the Origami design, albeit made of plastic instead of cardboard. Folded and clipped together from a single piece of compressed polyethylene, the Clip design is more sturdy than the Origami design, and should provide similar cost savings to consumers thanks to lower construction times.

The final design is the Mate, which focuses more on customizability than cost savings. It features a pre-constructed printer with several colorful, removable exterior panels that can be swapped and replaced, the idea here being you can fit the color scheme of the printer to the colors in the room.

All the designs are currently still in the prototype phase, although the Clip is perhaps the closest to reaching store shelves. Senior Samsung designer Juehyun Jung says there's "no barrier for production" of the Clip after a "few engineering problems are solved", and that the unit could potentially cost 10% less than other similar products.

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Very interesting indeed. While they do mention that they are fire resistant, I wonder how much heat is generated and how much of that can be felt.
 
Lol ahhh. I'm gonna have to finish watching that. I started and never finished lol. I watched it for "inspiration" before work xD
 
Sounds like they having fun at Samsung. Can't sell this in the market but hey can play around with the idea.
 
So they replaced the external housing with cardboard and call it recyclable? There is the actual printer inside made of plastic and metal, circuit boards (very hard to recycle) and the toxic ink. Also why do we need disposable printers exactly? Is this the society we want? In my experience a printer will last as long as you can buy ink for it. Not "Oh I need to print up an email, lets go buy a new printer we can than throw away". It's not like its compact and portable, pretty much the same size as every other printer out there these days. But you can build it yourself and throw it away when the cardboard box its made out of starts to look like ****, now thats progress... Also wonder what part is fire resistant, among the plastic and cardboard it looks like it will burn like theres no tomorrow.
 
They said
"The idea is that this printer housing can be recycled once the printer has run its course, reducing waste material after it has been thrown away"

I said
"..reducing cost production"
 
This looks interesting and I'm glad they are thinking about the box however physical printers seem to last for years and the major costs are associated with the toner/ink.
 
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