Concav Printer Teaches an Old Dog New Tricks

Laptops, TVs, MP3 players and certainly cell phones have seen many different design incarnations that appeal to both the practical use of the device and the need for something that looks totally rad in your hand or on your entertainment center. But printers have been pretty standard, really. Big plastic box with a paper feeder tray up top and page-catching tray in front. But not anymore...

The Concav printer takes advantage of the fact that when paper is just slightly bent, it will use it’s own weight as support and keep from collapsing—eliminating the need for paper trays (They just break two months in, anyway).

Paper feeds in the back and comes out of the front, making the Concav a pretty sleek-looking desktop printer. It even turns CMYK cartridges into a design element. By plugging transparent, ink-filled cartridges into thin slots along the side of the printer, you get a groovy little racing stripe for your printer. What a long way for this little under-appreciated gizmo!

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Comments (6)

Looks great! It's about time the printer world got some design upgrades.

posted by modernguy on January 28th 2009 at 2:09pm
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so, you have to feed each sheet by hand? F that.

posted by mscot on January 28th 2009 at 2:30pm
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This printer would be out of ink after 20 pages with that small cartridge...

Props to the design but i dont think this is practical

posted by cscamp20 on January 28th 2009 at 5:54pm
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While this looks cool, it actually takes up as much (or more) space than a printer with a sheet feeder because you still need to have free space on either side to feed and receive the print-out. Personally, I prefer a front feeding tray and front outputting model (like Canon's models) that you can tuck in somewhere out of sight and don't have to mess with to some minimalist, impractical design.

posted by Orchid64 on January 28th 2009 at 6:47pm
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I´d buy this! It might even solve the problem of feeding thicker papers which usually get stuck in conventional printers, mostly because of the position in which the printer pulls it in.

posted by Claus on January 28th 2009 at 8:07pm
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Yep, concave paper is stiff, but paper bent parallel to the print head can be fed from a stack of flat paper.
Come to think of it, if I take the tray off an HP, Canon, or most other printers the paper will feed through it just fine.
The point of the paper tray is to catch it so it doesn't land on the floor.

And as mscot said, "feed each sheet by hand?..."

Looks half-baked to me.

posted by dhenry on January 30th 2009 at 12:51pm
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