The hardware tinkering contest “Mach flott den Schrott” (roughly: “get that junk going again”), run by c’t magazine, is over. In the end the printer took 2nd place in the “Originality” category
and 3rd place in the “Implementation” category.
I’d like to thank everyone who voted for the toilet paper printer in such large numbers. According to heise.de, more than 16,000 individual ratings were submitted in total. If you’re interested in the detailed results, have a look at this page. It lists all the winners with their ratings, rankings and prizes. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank Daniel Brunwinkel and Paul Kocyla, who helped me fix a few
defects on the toilet paper printer shortly before CeBIT.
The printer and a few projects by other prize winners were on display at the heise booth at CeBIT 2012 from March 6 to 10. I was at CeBIT myself on March 7 to accept my prize. As part of the talk on hardware hacking I explained a few more technical details and answered some questions about the project.
What I won is an iModela, a CNC mill in a carrying case (sponsor: Roland DG). Unfortunately the prize couldn’t be handed over at CeBIT. According to heise, though, it will be sent to me by mail as soon as it is available.
Since a video is famously better than text, here’s a short video about the iModela.
The feedback I received over the course of the contest was enormous. On top of the more than 100,000 views of my video on Youtube, I was swamped by a huge wave of emails. In a great many of these emails I was asked about building a replica. Unfortunately I have to say that the printer in this form is of course not fit for everyday use. With this version my main concern was to stick to the rules of the contest. However, because of the many (worldwide) requests I’ve decided to build a new version that can be replicated with little effort. The new version is meant to run not with a pen but with ordinary off-the-shelf printer cartridges. I’ve already been able to carry out first experiments with this setup using the Arduino Ink Shield by Nicholas Lewis. Detailed build instructions will of course be available on my blog as well. I’ll offer the electronic components at a low price in my shop. So stay tuned.
The printer and the other pieces can be seen live once more from April 18 to 22, 2012 at the “European Media Art Festival” in Osnabrück.
EMAF 2012 Trailer by Holger Risse from EMAF – European Media Art Fest on Vimeo.
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