8 Most Impressive Printers

When ordering a latte in Taiwan, customers are prompted to snap a “selfie” on their smartphone before sending it to the machine. At the end of the coffee-making process, the machine prints the photo on the foam using edible brown powder. Text can be added, too.

The machine is the idea of the drink company Let's Coffee, which operates a chain of vending kiosks inside Taiwan's Family Mart convenience stores.

An innovative pen designed by Peter Dilworth and Max Bogue allows people to draw three-dimensional objects. It works just like a 3D Printer. Heated plastic comes out of the 3D pen and instantly solidifies.
You can draw on any surface, or lift it up in the air to create real 3D objects.

This Origami printer was designed by Min-chui Kim, Sang-in Lee, and Seung-wook Jeong of Samsung Electronics, with an eye toward simplifying the complex structures usually required for building a printer. The exterior provides the same durability as a plastic cover via an origami-based assembly method to house the print engine.

Shashinkan is Japanese for "photobooth," and Japanese creative agency PARTY has created the ultimate in Shashinkans with the Omote 3D. The project allows customers to buy models of themselves in three sizes: small (10cm high), medium (15cm), and large (20cm).

There are 3 steps:

First, they ask each customer to come to the store and have themselves scanned with a 3D scanner. They have to stay still for a maximum of 15 minutes during this process.

Second, a 3D model is created based on the scanned data. The details, such as hair color and clothing, are carefully modified.

Finally, from the finished 3D model a miniature figurine is printed using a 3D color printer.

Engineering student Matthew Krueger didn't have the money to buy a Makerbot (a company that manufactures 3D printers.), so he did the next best thing: he designed his own which he called LEGObot. To save money Krueger built his 3D printer with materials that he already had on hand. Considering that the current construction requires manual movement programming and can only print in glue or sugar sticks, the printer can be seen as something of a beta, but it still looks pretty good for a beta.

The 3D food printer was designed and is being further developed in America by Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Laboratory, headed by Dr. Jeffrey Ian Lipton. The team's Fab@home technology allows three-dimensional objects to be "printed" by a syringe, whose movements are determined by computer blueprints and models. Layering lines of material ultimately generates a three-dimensional object in a process they call "solid freeform fabrication."

Although they are in no way limited to food, fab@home machines have already been used to print chocolates, cookies, and even domes of turkey meat.

While previous models have typically used only one syringe, the Cornell team is now working with multiple syringes to permit the combination of diverse ingredients in precise proportions.

This cool waterfall printer, spotted in Osaka Station City, Japan is a type of fountain that has the ability to ‘print' and display the time and pretty images just like how it would look on a piece of paper. Except that this time, the canvas is a vertical plane of nothing but pure air and water as ink. The last piece of the equation – gravity makes everything come together, turning water into art.

American painter Tyree Callahan converted an old typewriter from the 1930s into a machine that prints colors instead of letters. Characters on the keys were replaced by colors and paint blocks that were attached to the typebars. Now you can type a painting on a color typewriter.