this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Using coffee or tea as printer ink (slrpnk.net)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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There is apparently a printer that can use spent coffee or tea leaves to print. I love this idea but I would not buy a printer when so many are being thrown away. I pull them out of dumpsters with intent to repair them. So the question is, can they be hacked to work with coffee or tea?

Canon actually disclosed how to hack their cartridges as a consequence of a semiconductor shortage due to coronavirus. So this suggests #Canon could be a candidate for this hack. Has anyone tried it? How precisely do we have to match the viscosity of homemade ink to the original ink?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think the main problem with this idea is that the only real reason to print something these days is to store some important info offline for a longer period of time. This means the color in the ink needs to be especially resistant to degradation, so that even many years later the text is still readable.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I’m printing stuff every week and it need not be archive quality. Examples:

  • notes for a talk (no projector)
  • flyers of upcoming events/protests/demonstrations to post around town
  • CVs (coffee/tea ink would be ideal if interviewing for a Greenpeace or digital rights gig, toner otherwise)
  • snail mail. Copious snail mail. Probably 95+% of the population of humans and corporations use Microsoft or Google for email. Both of those surveillance capitalists block me (based on sloppy preemptive IP reputation) -- but even if they didn’t, I won’t even share my email address with #GAFAM pawns because I will not serve as a surveillance capital supporter or allow myself to be part of their data collection. If there’s a non-email means of comms, it’s typically Twitter or Facebook (also non-starters for me).
  • patterns for sewing
  • paper cheques. Bill pay services are outsourced by banks to 3rd parties. Costs nothing but the privacy is suspect (IOW, they profit from the data sharing). So I’ve gone back to paper cheques. Though coffee/tea ink would not work for this.. must be MICR toner.