
Stack - usaphp
http://www.mugiyamamoto.com/stack/
======
mcrider
At first I thought, and don't see why this couldn't be, a scanner that eats
through documents and saves a digital copy of them. This form factor would
make digitizing large sets of printed records much more appealing.

~~~
oellegaard
I scan all my receipts and incoming mail, I doubt you would even be able to
make a stable "tower" of these things. It probably only works with new paper.
One of my first thoughts was also that leaving the paper open in the free
would result in a lot of dust collecting on it.

~~~
mieubrisse
I've been moving to do the exact same thing at home, to get rid of all that
paper clutter. If you don't mind me asking, what scanner do you use -
presumably one with an auto document feeder?

~~~
ams6110
Hopefully not the Xerox scanner that can alter the documents.

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dictum
Really interesting as an experiment in industrial design and a conversation
piece. As a viable product, I have some doubt: anecdotally, when I see people
printing documents, they're in something of a hurry, and keeping the pile of
paper sheets aligned would be hard. If you slightly knock the printer while
using it, the stack of paper may tilt to a side. And having to keep the papers
aligned would become an annoyance similar to the PC LOAD LETTER of yore.
Handling A4 and Letter sizes at the same time may not be possible. I don't
know how being exposed in a pile would affect the humidity of the paper...

I like how it makes me think of printing as a computing process, paper as
input and printed page as output, but instead of feeding the machine with
input, you "feed" the input with a machine and it gives you the output. If you
extend the thought, it's as if the machine disappears, and paper (the input)
is processing and then outputting (printed page) itself.

~~~
arh68
> _If you extend the thought, it 's as if the machine disappears_

Indeed it does. How long was it after we discovered DNA that we discovered its
'machine', DNA polymerase? And in the end, what's more interesting?

~~~
joss82
Just to further your comment, the ribosome is another interesting machine that
reads DNA and spits out little pieces of you:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome)

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dag11
This is beautiful.

I love the idea of an inverted printer, where instead of paper moving through
the printer, it's as if the printer is moving through the paper.

~~~
prpetten
This should be in MOMA.

~~~
tdoggette
MoMA's industrial design section is the only part that I remember years later.
Gosh, what a cool place.

~~~
eru
The Red Dot design museum in Essen, Germany, is also worth a visit, if you are
ever in central Europe.

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eksith
That's a very cool project.

But I wonder how it gets over the initial friction of lifting and pulling the
paper through as it goes lower on the stack. Surely there's a limit after
which, you'd need to remove the completed sheets off the top?

~~~
bryogenic
Maybe the way they are looking at it is like this:

    
    
        Top Paper
        1 ---------
        Gap Tray
        2 ---------
        Bottom Paper
    

Paper would be collected from bottom using standard scanner/paper style paper
grabbing, scanned or printed to and placed in Gap Tray. Gap tray and entire
top paper stack need lifted and placed back on support layer 1.

Pages would probably be upside down of their original unless they were fed
back and forth.

All the paper would need lifted up, so there would be a limit, unless... a
different idea would be the same thing along a horizontal track of papers.

I'm still liking the idea of a scanner shredder.
[http://designforpeople.ca/?p=215](http://designforpeople.ca/?p=215)

To extend this stack design make it like an inverted shredder with a 5" shop
vac hose connected to the top :P

~~~
eksith
Clever! A scanner that digitizes text as it destroys it can see some good use
in a disposal/archival location.

The Gap Tray itself would still need to rest on something while it grabs the
bottom sheet. There may be slightly less effort if it grabs the sheets from
the side rather than from top/bottom. This way, has a shorter distance it has
to pull through, but the friction may still be significant.

All this talk has really whet my appetite, though. Now I really want to see it
come to life.

~~~
brador
Clever until the scanner part breaks but the shredder keeps shredding.

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detharonil
It seems as though a more practical (though perhaps more dust-prone, when
empty) design would do this partially upside-down. Rather than allowing the
printer to move downward though the paper, why not load the paper from the
top?

One could set a full stack atop something similar to his current design using
the rollers, and the finished pages could exit through the front in order to
prevent them from building up below. The final roller could simply be removed
and a slit added to the front such that the finished paper could exit the
printer cleanly. A solid plastic sheet could then be added to catch the
printed paper which folds back atop the body of the printer when it is being
transported or simply not in use, perhaps to prevent the aforementioned build-
up of dust.

This accomplishes Yamamoto's goal of removing the paper tray and simplifying
as well as shrinking the design while avoiding the dangerous consequences of
brushing past the printer while it is atop a high stack of paper.

Of course, none of this addresses a central flaw with his design. Even if two
models are produced for Letter and A4 paper, there are still many other sizes
in use, and there appears to be no easy way to adjust the sizes of the intake
and output areas without the dreaded paper tray.

~~~
solistice
Technically you only have to adjust the size of the inlet and handle the rest
in software. Since the paper would be comming down vertically, you can do
mechanical centering akin to that used in industrial processes.

~~~
detharonil
I like the idea, but doing so still adds a great deal of complexity to a
supposedly simple design and adds a large amount to the size of the printer if
one accounts for the use of legal paper. While I wouldn't mind settling on a
standard paper size, the design still leaves a great deal to be desired. It
appears to be more of a gimmick than anything.

------
rgovostes
This printer concept is also cool:
[http://renelee.net/arc/](http://renelee.net/arc/)

~~~
nadaviv
Pretty cool indeed. The design process [1] is also quite interesting to read.

[1] [http://renelee.net/arc/2/](http://renelee.net/arc/2/)

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johnvschmitt
The sooner the printer dies, the better.

Every company or process that makes me print something in 2013 makes me barf.
Ever heard of web forms? Docusign? Email?

So, as beautiful as this is, it's solving a problem for 1960-1995.

Now, all I want to see in the printer innovation is some way to kill it off
faster.

~~~
peafruit
I still have paper copies of important documents from the 1980s. I have no
idea where the digital copies from that era disappeared to.

Paper has its place; it's a fantastic archival medium.

I also still print out contracts to review them. They're easier to mark up
that way, and I can focus entirely on the paper -- including quickly leafing
through it, while comparing multiple pages -- in a way that I can't as easily
do on the desktop.

Paper isn't dead yet; it still has the best UX available for many common use
cases.

~~~
StavrosK
I have no idea where any of my important paper documents are from the 1990s.
All my digital documents, though, are in my "Archives" folder.

This says more about which medium you and I pay most attention to, rather than
how well paper archives.

~~~
ams6110
Documents printed on quality archival paper will outlast digital media, if
stored properly.

~~~
StavrosK
Digital media will outlast archival paper, if copied properly.

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markkanof
So based on this design concept I have to assume that they expect this printer
to run on either batteries or wireless power of some sort. I don't mean to be
too down on this as it is an interesting concept, but it annoys me when
designers leave out things like power cords to make their mockup look cleaner
than it actually is. It seems like a copout.

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spyder
Another cool printer:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baqDk1G9zUE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baqDk1G9zUE)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPhLFxRgfQ8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPhLFxRgfQ8)

~~~
el_benhameen
This is definitely cool, but it strikes me as a solution looking for a
problem. Mobile printers that print out a sheet much faster than this are
available at pretty low cost. I'm genuinely curious to hear why someone would
buy this--any thoughts?

~~~
Too
Spiral bound notebooks(as in the video), cardboard boxes, walls and other odd
shaped surfaces don't fit into printers.

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axelf1989
Would it require a perfectly stacked pile? It would seem annoying if you
slightly bang in to the pile and have it be off balance.

~~~
solistice
Doesn't look like he accounted for paper that isn't stacked perfectly, but as
in my comment above, it wouldn't be incredibly hard to incorporate that into
the design.

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tlongren
I'd be knocking the thing over all the time I'm afraid. Would probably only
use 100 or so sheets at a time, though.

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faddotio
All I see is a target for my stumbling clumsy self!

And a big cleanup job afterward.

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Zolomon
This has a very "functional programming paradigm" feel around it.

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groundCode
Looks fantastic, but I wonder about the tolerance wrt paper alignment. I'm
picturing my office where people usually rush up to the printer, grab their
printout and bump the printer.

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eridius
That looks really cool. But what happens if the user bumps the printer? The
entire stack of paper falls over, and the printer falls to the floor.

~~~
StavrosK
What happens when you bump the stack of 20,000 sheets of paper in your
printer's tray currently?

~~~
munchbunny
Not much. The plastic guides do a good job of keeping the paper in place.
Unless you mean the reams of paper outside the printer?

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nnutter
Seems like it would be easy to make a model that still houses the paper to
prevent tipping and would still allow for infrequent loading.

~~~
bryogenic
Even better, maybe turn it on its side and have it move horizontally?

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curuinor
I recall reading about this idea in the science-fiction role-playing game
Shadowrun. It's set in 2060-2080, so technology is better in nearly all ways:
including a printer design as described here. Very interesting, in the shadow
of the total lack of progress in actual printer technology in the last few
decades.

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zenocon
Is there a video of it in action?

~~~
alphonse23
doesn't look like it. I'm beginning to think this is all hype and no real
show.

~~~
taejo
It's a design concept.

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aaron695
Seriously?

Another here's a CGed idea not even close to being implemented? (Which is fine
except 99% of the time is because it's not possible/practical)

I know there's a claim there's a real version but not seeing pics of it? Or
youtube?

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mjgoeke
When I saw the first image I thought it was going to be a scanner (for
digitizing the information in the stack, then recycling said stack), not a
printer. That would have been more impressive to me.

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acegopher
Does anyone remember dot-matrix printers? You also didn't need a paper tray:
[http://imgur.com/4tsSx2W](http://imgur.com/4tsSx2W)

~~~
mamcx
I wonder what if a laser printer could be feed like with the paper of a dot-
matrix (with the tray helpers)

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networkjester
Wow. Just, wow.

The first words out of my mouth actually were "that's beautiful".

Nothing else more constructive to say, just wanted to leave kudos here for the
OP.

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sova
can't believe no one has noticed that he made a real life turing machine
(sorta)

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mathattack
Is this art or a prototype? I just see it on my desk tipping over. :-)

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oellegaard
I'd love to see the kickstarter for this :)

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lukejduncan
Awesome project, cool concept.

I'd imagine the single challenge problem would be wind. If people walk by or
the window is open...

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chm
All I'm thinking is:

What diploma?

~~~
jmduke
All you have to do is click on over to the 'About' section!:

 _I 'm an Industrial Designer recently graduated from the Ecole Cantonale
d'Art de Lausanne (ECAL)_

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alphonse23
cool idea, but no video -- don't believe it.

