What is the Penjet? A Printer That Prints With A Pen

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Date: Thursday October 25, 2012 07:52:59 am
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    What is the Penjet? A Printer That Prints With A Pen

    The PenJet is a printer that prints with a pen. The PenJet project is a collaboration of Rietveld Academie students Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and myself. The project has originated from the workshop “Uncommon Usage” given by Jürg and Urs Lehni. During this workshop we experimented with the movement of printer heads. This resulted in a printer which could play a mini harp and another printer which showed the movement of the print head using an attached pen. In time we got more control over the movements so we could experiment with type. An adapted typeface for the PenJet emerged. Even adapted pictures were “printed” in several layers.

    It commonly applies that the new (im) possibilities of a new technique influence the design process. This was also the case for the PenJet. Therefore it was decided to continue the project outside this workshop. Every brand of printer has its own manner to move and it’s own characteristic rhythm. The Penjet shows the handwriting of the machine, some fine and straight, others messy and fluent. Also the quality settings of the printer (presentation/normal/concept) influence the way the lines are drawn. The result has both the imperfections of handwriting and the preciseness of a machine. Every page is unique because the printed result remains unpredictable. The PenJet prints random connection lines while there’s nothing to print.  On the final exam exhibition there was a print workshop arranged where could be experimented.
    PenJet site: http://www.penjet.eu

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    A Printer Hack Reveals Your Inkjet’s Hidden Handwriting
    The Penjet swaps the inkjet cartridge for a felt-tip pen, uncovering the algorithmic artistry behind every print job.

    A few decades ago, personal printers were wondrous machines, even as they screeched in laborious pain to produce nothing more than monochromatic type. By comparison, every free-with-computer-purchase inkjet today is a professional printing studio. And yet it’s easy to take for granted the precision engineering required to place picoliter dots of ink on paper in millions of unique colors.

    Penjet, a project by Rietveld Academie students Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld, swaps the inkjet print cartrdige for a felt tip pen to reveal a printer’s fascinating inner workings. With no way to control ink flow (the pen never leaves the paper), Penjet’s images are less pictures than they are maps of how a printer produces pictures. They trace the unique, algorithmic language that the ho-hum inkjet printer has been dutifully scribing for years, dynamically waypointing its way through the photos and text we print.

    “The Penjet shows the handwriting of the machine,” the team writes. “The final result has both the imperfections of handwriting and the preciseness of a machine. However, no matter how much control there is, the printed result remains unpredictable.”

    Crafting the Penjet was a design problem in itself. Tweaking the precise pressure the pen had on paper was key–too much would rip a hole in the pulp, and too little wouldn’t draw much of anything. There’s also an obvious single-color limitation, so to create more complex prints, Penjet is reloaded with new pens and pages are reprinted in layers.

    Ultimately, it’s a fascinating exploration of the unintentionally creative processes coded into every print job, with no two pieces alike. How paradoxical, for a device invented to reproduce images with exacting precision.

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