Get all the paper that you've printed by mistake in the office, and load up the paper tray. Then deprinting energises the paper in some fancy way, and detaches the toner from the paper, gives it a quick iron and out pops lovely clean paper ready to be used again.
I suggest this as I've just wasted half a tree fiddlng around with the alignment on a cheque print report.
Look, before anyone tells me that 'it would be a great idea, but it sounds like magic' - it may need a new type of paper, new type of toner, new type of printer....!-- noblea, Feb 16 2005 Zen_20copier [hippo, Feb 16 2005] Dry Erase Printer Another option [Worldgineer, Feb 16 2005] yep. http://www.gizmag.c...elf-for-reuse/9283/ [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 10 2008] new laws of physics?-- etherman, Feb 16 2005 New toner. You'd be better trying to turn the toner colourless in my opinion. I like the ironing option though. [+]-- david_scothern, Feb 16 2005 If heat fuses the toner and the paper, maybe extreme cold could free it. I'd pay lots to have a laser-printer with liquid nitrogen "smoke" pouring out.-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, Feb 16 2005 An ink-jet cartridge that prints Liquid Paper (or bleach)?
I like the idea of little tanning beds, where dye-printed paper could sit for a week catching UV rays and bleach fumes.-- robinism, Feb 16 2005 I've reused the backs of printed sheets. Often they make it through without jamming.-- FarmerJohn, Feb 16 2005 Dissapearing inkjet ink. Just make sure you read it quickly.-- Worldgineer, Feb 16 2005 Perhaps it could glue the printed sides of two sheets facing each other, so you end up with one blank sheet of heavy bond.-- waugsqueke, Feb 16 2005 My anno got longer and longer and finally turned into an idea of it's own - see "Recycling Laser Printer".-- wagster, Feb 16 2005 MIT are working on re-printable paper based not on ink, but a property of the paper itself.
[no link, too lazy to google it]-- not_only_but_also, Feb 17 2005 Print the page completely black, then have white ink to print your report in negative? Not very ink-thrifty, but it would look cool...-- kmlabs, Feb 17 2005 I think you meant "completely black"?-- robinism, Feb 17 2005 I opened up a laser printer here today to change the toner, and noticed a lot of white powder around the corona wire - could this be anti-toner?-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, Feb 17 2005 Yes I did [robinism], thanks for pointing it out. Now amended...-- kmlabs, Feb 17 2005 Was about to post avery similar idea .[+] for this one, instead. I envisioned all the office-printers to be outfitted with toner that decomposed under UV, and a box that used paper can be stacked into, being automatically taken out one by one, UV-irradiated, ironed, then stacked in a fresh-paper bin. I am not sure about the energy requirements, though. Might have to be centralized for every office building.-- loonquawl, May 25 2009 Some time back, I heard about an un-photocopier (a quick google failed to turn up anything useful). As photocopying (old school xerography) is electrostatic, it can be undone, to a degree, depending on the exact properties of the toner (I forget how, but with charged plates and vacuums and stuff). The trouble is most new photocopiers are more a scanner+printer than the old optical+electriostatic method.-- neutrinos_shadow, May 25 2009 A modern photocopier typically consists of a scanner and a laser printer. Doesn't a laser printer work the same way (electrostatically) as an old-fashioned optical photocopier?-- notexactly, May 27 2019 Yes, it does. The toner is transferred to the paper as a dry powder, which is then heated to melt it, thereby bonding it almost permanently to the paper.-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 27 2019 So a deprinter for something printed by either machine would have to remelt the toner, and then somehow drive or suck it out of the paper where it's flown around the fibers.
I didn't see this earlier:
// Print the page completely black, then have white ink to print your report in negative? Not very ink-thrifty, but it would look cool... //
I once did something like a combination of that and the original idea here. I printed paper entirely black with a laser printer, and then laser-etched the toner off to make text (and gradients that didn't turn out great due to bad PDF rendering). It didn't go back to white, but was more of a beige, due to the paper being a bit scorched, I think, even though the power setting was about as low as it could go. If people want, I can take a picture of it.-- notexactly, May 28 2019 random, halfbakery