PRINTERS MADE FROM CORN / BIO-RESIN

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Date: Friday October 16, 2009 10:20:26 am
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    http://www.absolutegadget.com/200910142711/news/printers/hp-corn-starch-bio-resin-printer.html
    PRINTERS MADE FROM CORN  /  BIO-RESIN !
    Shucks! It’s a corn printer
    Racecars
    made of vegetables. Mobile phones made out of recycled plastic bottles.
    What’s next, a printer made out of corn starch? Well, actually, we came
    pretty close to that. Back in 2000 HP was experimenting with “material
    innovation” and knocked up around 100 prototypes all made from a
    “bio-resin” created using corn starch.“It is actually made out of corn
    starch. I’m not saying you can eat it, but it is a bit like a taco,”
    said Bruno Zago, UK and Ireland environmental manager at HP.“But at the
    end of the day it’s about looking at what can we do with materials and
    it’s important for us to understand that plastic will end one day –
    because plastic is petroleum based, and petroleum will end.”“Bio-resins
    have been on HP’s radar since 2000 when we built the corn printer,”
    confirmed Dean Miller, program lead for worldwide inkjet supplies
    recycling at HP.“We don’t think today that there are bio-resins that
    meet our requirements and we’re not certain yet that the bio-resins are
    as good a solution as finding good technical nutrient cycles like we’re
    doing with our recycling system using closed-loop materials.”

    Zago
    said the idea of using bio-resins led to the question of whether that
    process has a bigger or lesser impact than a petroleum based
    plastic?“We’ve done some work around that as well and the truth is that
    it’s similar, there isn’t a huge difference,” Zago said.“Corn requires
    fertilisers and they take a lot of energy to manufacture. It requires
    irrigation and that’s probably the biggest piece. So when you look at
    the environmental impact of growing corn to create a printer it’s quite
    huge.”“Then you get into the social issues as well, where people say,
    ‘You’re starting to grow crops to make bio-fuels and bio-plastics,
    you’re starting to impact upon food.’ So there are a few issues there
    and currently we’ve not taken bio-plastics any further.”

    However,
    Miller says bio-resins could still play a part in HP’s manufacturing
    process one day.“We continue to look at them and investigate them and
    we’re working with a number of bio-resin suppliers to tell them what
    our needs are so that they can move the material in directions that
    would be possible for us,” said Miller.

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