Back-to-School Printer and Scanner Best Buys 2010 - Ah, the dog days of summer! Barbeques, hot days, cool pools, and nothing to worry about...except possibly the growing dread that school will start again in the not-too-distant future. Well, it's never to early to start planning your back-to-school purchases, and in fact there are lots of great deals available this summer. But where to start the hunt for a new inkjet or laser printer, or a document or photo scanner? Or perhaps a nice all-in-one that does it all? Or how about a portable photo printer that the kids can use to print out pictures of their fun summer vacation (they'll be great to look at when there's a foot of snow outside)? No worries--I've put together a list of Printer and Scanner Back-to-School Best Buys to help the shopping process go a bit more smoothly. And check back now and then for more, as I'm expecting a new crop of printers and scanners for testing soon!
High-Detail 3D Printing in Wax and Terra Cotta -  If consumer-level 3D printing has had any shortcomings, it could be the level of the details that could be printed. Shapeways is now looking at using the EnvisionTec Aureus printer to print in wax and terra cotta at some unbelievable levels of detail. According to the company: "The XY resolution is 43 micron and the Z voxel height is 25 micron. Overall building volume is 60x45x100mm." As you can see on the image, that equates to a pretty astonishing level of detail. Wax models could be good for casting jewelry. And the terra cotta cufflinks look even better than the ones I ordered in steel recently!
How to Hack an HP Printer and Make It a 3D Printer - A regular old HP 540 inkjet printer gets a quick makeover and becomes a 3D printer in this amazing video from YouTube user Scorch1974. The basics of the hack are not particularly technical. He takes out the paper tray and feed rolls, builds a simple wooden platform, and uses a powdery mixture of 50 percent weldwood and 50 percent water putty as the medium. After each pass, another layer of powder is added and the printer makes another pass. The end result is small and perhaps not particularly useful; but the hack itself is an ingenious one and it's likely to spur more DIYers to figure out how to improve on it.
Five New Canon Pixma Printers With Movie Print Feature - Tired of missing those once-in-a-lifetime photos that get captured on video but not in a photo? Don't worry, Canon has got you covered. Its line of five new Canon Pixma Printers includes a new "Full High Definition (HD) Movie Print" feature. Here's how Canon describes it: ...Read Full Post
Find Out What's Inside a Copy Machine - If you've ever wondered what the guts of a copy machine look like but haven't been foolhardy enough to actually experiment on one, you're in for a treat: Bill Hammack, the Engineer behind EngineerGuy.com, has made a video that shows you what you've been missing. Power tools, hammers, and hacksaws are included in the tool kit needed to take the Canon office copier apart. Along the way, Hammack tells the story of how Chester Carlson invented and patented the machine. It's an amusing and informative overview of the very complicated technology that we take for granted. If you're at all interested in how stuff works, you won't want to miss the EngineerGuy's excellent video.
New Canon MFP: The Canon Pixma MX870 Wireless Printer -  Looking for the newest and greatest from Canon? The company now offers a new all-in-one printer, the Canon Pixma MX870 Wireless Printer. I haven't had the opportunity to test it yet, but PC World's M. David Stone liked it a lot, noting only that the speed was not quite up to par. "If the MX870 were a bit faster it would be easy to give it a glowing recommendation," he writes. You can find it for under $150 via PriceGrabber.
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