Tocano, a spinout from Delft technology tuition in the Netherlands which is working on an inkless printing expertise, has closed a €1 million angel round to fund the subsequent stage of its tech building and flow a step closer to building its first commercial product.
The startup all started as the graduate pupil project of co-founder Venkatesh Chandrasekar who, together with fellow pupil Van der Veen, established the company in 2015, gaining early backing from the college.
The crew now incorporates eight employees and is a component of the company incubator yes!Delft.
Now it’s true there are already some ‘inkless’ printing applied sciences in use commercially. One we lined returned in 2009 is Zink: A colour printer which doesn’t require ink cartridges within the specific printer; but does require particular Zink photo paper which has colored ink embedded in it. So an ‘inkless printer’, technically, however now not really ink-much less know-how.
Tocano’s tech — which it’s branding Inkless — has a much cleaner declare to the identify because it doesn’t contain having to use ink-saturated paper. Nor another class of special paper, such as thermal-coated paper — which is yet another category of inkless printing already in use (akin to for receipts).
somewhat they are the usage of an infrared laser to burn the floor of the paper — so carbonization is getting used as the printing medium.
and they claim their approach is able to produce black and white printing with blacks as darkish and reliable as ink-based prints. notwithstanding, clearly, they’re nevertheless early in the building process.
right here’s a photograph of their latest prototype, alongside a pattern of textual content printed with it:
The angel funding could be used to are attempting to reach what they dub “a aggressive printing performance”. After which they are saying they’ll need to lift more money to construct the primary product — so they’re already planning the next financing circular (for the end of the 12 months).
“With this funds we could make our expertise ‘building-able’, which ability that we can meet the necessary excellent and velocity performance requirements in order that we are able to start with the building of our first product”, says co-founder and CEO Arnaud van der Veen in an announcement.
“[The] subsequent round will either be financed through strategic partners or task capitalists. the first conferences have already taken location.”
in the event that they can successfully productize their laser carbonization approach the promise is printing devoid of the cost, waste and limits imposed by way of ink refills plus different consumables.
“I all the time evaluate this to the transition from the analogue camera to the digital digital camera,” says van der Veen. “unexpectedly americans had been capable of make unlimited photographs and it became not mandatory to replace the movies. Likewise, with our printing options, refill and replacement of ink and consumables aren’t necessary.”
even though somewhat how high priced the subsequent-gen laser printer machines themselves could be if/when they arrive on shop cabinets is still to be considered.
Tocano says its first product should be aimed at industrial users for packaging and labelling use cases — akin to printing barcodes, shelf existence data and product codes on applications and labels.
Its ambition is to latitude out after that, bringing further printer items to market targeting different company users — and at last even the buyer market.
“Our first product will fit [the packaging/labelling] market but after that we’ll make the expertise available for construction printers, office printers, purchaser printers and receipt printers. In all these market we will present the same advantages, a cheaper and greater sustainable printer without any bother with ink, cartridges or toners,” he provides.
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