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Light Emitting Pictures On Standard Inkjet Printer 178

Posted by timothy from the the-media-cost-is-where-they-getcha dept.
CrashRide writes: "This story on FOX states that UofA scientists have discovered a way to print light-emitting pictures on thin sheets of plastic using a standard inkjet printer. Fold up pocket monitors?" The article says that these scientists have produced "OLEDs of simple bands of light, a scorpion, the University of Arizona logo and even photographs of themselves."
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Light Emitting Pictures On Standard Inkjet Printer More

Light Emitting Pictures On Standard Inkjet Printer

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  • Makes... (Score:5, Funny)

    by B00yah ( 213676 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:26PM (#2560839) Homepage
    reading comic books under the sheets at night a lot easier :)
  • Lite Brite?

    Now if we could just get that kind of dazzling brilliance and the happy children singing songs to our spreadsheets

  • The Cost? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:27PM (#2560848) Homepage Journal
    So I can run my $72 photo inkjet with an $800 print cartridge!

    This is the Gilette model: "Give 'em razors, charge for blades!"

    • I work in computer sales, so i should know. Cost of most home purchased printers $50-200. Cost of ink(~$40) over 5 years, replacing ink once a year, black + color, 80 * 5 = 400. So you pay like 2x for the ink vs the printer.

  • Amazing! Is there no new technology (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:29PM (#2560850)
    that pr0n can't benefit from?

  • Protection (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bonzoesc ( 155812 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:30PM (#2560854) Homepage
    Jabbour said the next step of development is to find a way to protect the sheets from moisture, which damages them.
    I can't wait until they discover lamination. Imagine what these could do for portable video games! Gone are the days of using a halogen head lamp like miners do just to play Game Boy.

  • Bookmakers, Etc? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <ieshan@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:31PM (#2560860) Homepage Journal
    It says "cheap".

    Could industries like bookmakers or publishers use this sort of thing? I'm rather fond of the glowing text on the black background, if you ask me, and it would provide a great alternative to something like a reading light. of course, it'll probably jack the cost of books up. Even though they do claim it'll be "inexpensive".

    However, I do think their assumption about 'computer monitors' is silly - right now, they're printing flat pictures, not moving, highly detailed ones.
    • It would still require electricity to power the book, and there would have to be traces embedded in the pages to get the electricity to the print. Interesting idea, though.

      I don't think the computer monitor idea is silly at all, especially when you consider the DPI that a good printer can acheive. You'd just print an array of RGB dots on a sheet thats, say, 34"x44" (standard E size, which most plotters can handle, including the inkjet plotter I'm eyeing thoughtfully at this very moment). Frankly, a 56" diagonal viewable screen that I can pin to my wall like a poster doesn't sound silly to me at all...

      Of course, it'll still require support circuitry and such (which can also be printed, I used to work at a company that did that) and interface connectors and such, so in the short term it would just make flat-panel monitors cheaper.

    • "right now, they're printing flat pictures, not moving, highly detailed ones"

      hmm you might want to take a closer look at your LCD screen and check for moving parts.

      to make things look like they move you just have to print these things at great density and retain the power to turn them on and off at will.

      I would say it will certainly be possible to do it with this technology, but by the time it's that developed the established technologies will have moved on a ways and it won't be worth it.
    • obviously you haven't looked into this stuff a lot currently I know of a radio that uses oled and a few phones out in japan that use oled displays and if you want to see a place that has moveing pictures http://www.universaldisplay.com/
      they have aleardy got the foundation its just a matter of time before the lcd and the crt go the way of the dodo and I can't wait until I can have a cheap flat screen thats harder to break
    • As soon as those tiny musical chips were cheap enough they appeared in kids books, then in birthday cards, then in well... anything.

      The opportunities to make kids books light up are huge here - I'll stake 20 quid that thats the first implementation of this available in your average supermarket!
  • ...GLOW IN THE DARK PORN!!!

    But seriously, what are some real world applications for things like this? I haven't seen one in real life, so I don't know how bright they are, but I don't think we're at pocket monitor level yet.

  • So soon we'll be hearing... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eryq ( 313869 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:31PM (#2560863) Homepage
    "The dog ate my homework."

    "Why didn't you print out another copy?"

    "It ate my monitor too..."

  • Not a fold-up monitor (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by Pulzar ( 81031 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:32PM (#2560865)
    This is just a poster that glows -- it's a static picture that glows using a low amount of electricity. Unless you're running Windows, and all you need to display is the same bsod, you'll need a more "dynamic" display :).
    • well, looking at it that way, neither is a liquid crystal display. i think the idea they were trying to get at is that if yuo wire it up such that the light emission of the sheet can be varied (hence the "turns electrical energy into light" phrase in the article). the problem is never how to make it a display, but rather what to do with the surface that is supposed to emit light. before it was CRT, now LCD, next: lightup sheets?

    • Any full color matrix LCD or Plama display is essentially a poster that glows white when it is fully turned on, except the dots are really, really small. The pictures happen because each of the component dots in the "poster" are (for the most part) individually addressable.

      I think this research is more about the manufacturing technique, not about the final product.

      -AP

    • Making a fold-up monitor. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @07:00PM (#2560972)
      This is just a poster that glows -- it's a static picture that glows using a low amount of electricity. Unless you're running Windows, and all you need to display is the same bsod, you'll need a more "dynamic" display :).

      If you can print conducting traces, you could set up a grid pattern of traces around pixels that would let you selectively activate pixels, much as you do in a passive-matrix LED. At any given time, one horizontal line (say) would be ground, and the rest would be at Vdd. Vertical lines would be driven or not driven depending on whether you want pixels in the active line on or off. If these printed pixels really are OLEDs - diodes - then you won't have to worry about the other horizontal traces shorting across the vertical lines.

      I'm sure there are a number of ways of printing conducting traces with ink. Even a high-resistance trace could be electroplated after printing with thicker metal.

      The only question is whether a) the type of OLEDs printed with this technology are really diodes, passing current only in one direction, and 2) whether instantaneous current can be high enough to give an acceptable _average_ current (and brightness) per row over the whole scanning cycle. A row turned on one thousandth of the time needs to be a thousand times as bright when it's on.

      Other methods of addressing pixels in a display are of course possible. This is just one of the easiest (not necessarily best).
      • Proofread, and still goofed. I need sleep :).
      • First of all, nothing wrong with photos that provide their own light source - sure a dynamic display is an obvious goal, but so is a 3D display with built-in surround sound.

        Assuming little more than decent dynamic range, Photographs with their own light source could break the current 3.0 dynamic range barrior of modern museum prints.

        Imagine Ansel Adams with 30 zones.

        Even without dynamic range, they would make highly effecient lights. - solar powered billboards that light all night.

        As for conductive traces - they are in all probability not using the ink that came with the printer. Which raising an interesting point - what else could you put in a printer that would be interesting. If you could built up a few (thousand?) layers of rigid material, you could create model airplanes, houses, any 3 model etc. I sure hope my daughter has a 3d print set from HP when she is old enough to use a computer.

        AIK
      • One way to fix the brightness problem is to print a capacitor parallel to the diode... not hard, when you consider that you'll already have to print on both sides anyways (otherwise the horizontal and vertical lines will short out)

        Then, all you have to do is give enough juice that the cap gets a nice good charge while it can.
    • Well, the solution is obvious, just print out the next refresh of the screen. Imagine, with a high speed printer you can get 30 frames(pages) per second, this is sure to surpass current video displays as king!
    • Imagine the screen depth resolution you could have ..
      "The solution is 1,000 times thinner than a human hair" Just need to have enough dpi on your printer:)

    • No! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @07:37PM (#2561136) Homepage Journal
      You could use it as a monitor! Just with a really slow refresh rate! Imagine the game of quake...

      Print a page...
      Move joystick...
      Print a page...

    • Re:Not a fold-up monitor (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yes, why is it that every time some new printing technology is mentioned on /. someone equates it immediately with a computer display? If static images could be made into moving ones that easily, we would have holographic TV already. Please, stop putting these foolish rash conclusions in Slashdot summaries.

  • Power (Score:1)

    by Monte ( 48723 )
    ...and requires 20 times less electricity than a fluorescent light does, Jabbour said.

    So to read your newspaper I need a battery.

    BFD.

    • Re:Power (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I was wondering the same thing after reading the fluffy story on Fox. Anyone got a link to a meatier story?

      I think the solution is static electricity. For example, if the starter in your fluorescent lamp is blown, slide your fingertip along the bulb to light it. Since this paper uses 1/20th the power of fluorescent (instead of the impossible "20 times less..."), I think the necessary static charge would be extremely low. IANAEE, but I believe that when you charge the paper by handling it, the charge spreads evenly across the paper, lighting each pixel. Any EEs care to elaborate on this?

      • if the starter in your fluorescent lamp is blown

        Man, when I read this all I could think of was the Genie in Aladdin:

        "Somebody rub the lamp! Somebody rub the LA-U-MP!"

        Hey, with all this "rubbing talk" maybe it does have pr0n uses after all...now if they could just fix that "moisture" issue, then it would be...uhhh....'hard to beat'.

        Uh, yeah, perhaps a no comment is in order.
    • So to read your newspaper I need a battery.
      No! With this small solar cell taken from a calculator you can read your glowing newspaper in the dar... damn!

    • So to read your newspaper I need a battery.

      Actually, to read my newspaper in the dark you would need a battery. if you've got an outside light source there is no need to backlight it.
    • With that amount of power consumption, I could very easily see the use of a small pack of AAA batteries on someone's belt being used to power their reading material. It's a small price to pay for glowing books and possibly fold-up monitors.
  • This is what was done with a multimillion dollar grant from the US Dept. of Defense. I think it's pretty cool, even though the technology itself is pretty old (the article mentioned it was 14 *years* old).

    Basically all they do is put a solution onto plastic sheets that turns electrical energy into light. This is cool because in a few years we might see these special inkjet cartdiges appear on the consumer market. They would probably be in a kit including the cartridges with the special solution in them, and plastic paper to print on, some coating for the "paper", and a power supply to rig the whole thing up. You could make some pretty cool signs with this, yes indeed.

    I think it would be cool to make halloween signs, amateur beer signs for your bachelor pad, or coat your car's inside roof with them, and instead of having a dome-light, the whole inside roof of your car lights up!

    Cool stuff.

  • This sounds all well and good, but what I don't understand is how they address the individual pixels. If I read this correctly, they are spraying the light emitting pixels onto the sheet. But how are they getting the power to each pixel? Are they spraying wires on as well?

    • This is nondynamic, meaning each pixel displays one and only one color. So you radiate the entire sheet with elecricity (most likly the pixels conduct electricity to eachother) and they glow.
    • This would apply if the object had more than two states -- on, and off. which it does not.

    • You can use metalic ink and resistant ink in tapes. eg. Alps MD-5000 printer.

      Then you print the R-G-B and there you go a full motion. This is also old in terms of news, BBC carried it months ago and said it would be full motion so... BBC beat Fox any day of the week.

  • Don't trust FOX News (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The same people who claimed in 2001 that the lunar landings were faked...

  • Print Preview (Score:5, Funny)

    by jesser ( 77961 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:44PM (#2560905) Homepage Journal
    Does that mean the Mozilla team doesn't have to fix bug 2586 [mozilla.org], "Print Preview animates GIFs"? Here's the original bug report:

    In Print Preview, animated GIFs are still animated. I would love to say
    that it is not a bug, but unless the printing code can then back the
    preview up by animating the printed copy, I suggest the Print Preview
    should show a static image.

    This also applies to applets, Javascript, "hover" and "active" pseudo
    classes, and so on.

  • Still not as cool as eInk (Score:4, Interesting)

    by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:45PM (#2560911)
    I first saw this on a Sunday afternoon techie program, think about text flying around, blinking or being added dynamically via a wireless lan connection to a page and you've got the idea of it's coolness (even though its only monochrome).

    The thing I like about eInk the most is that its fairly high-res (well, it looks sharp to me) and that it does not require back-lighting, it reads like paper under natural light.

    http://www.eink.com/ [eink.com]

    • Link to video clip (Score:2, Informative)

      by Catskul ( 323619 )
      Here is an intersting page at universaldisplay corp. It includes some neat pictures and some video clips of the thing working. Not quite the same, but its OLED and on a flexible display. Neat.
      http://www.universaldisplay.com/foled.php

  • Think of the implications (Score:5, Funny)

    by tcd004 ( 134130 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:46PM (#2560917) Homepage
    on oragami.

  • UA OLED Research Dept (Score:5, Informative)

    by hmckee ( 10407 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @06:46PM (#2560918)
    There is a better story on the UA newspaper [arizona.edu]. And here is the link to research department [arizona.edu]. Not much here yet except for an animation.
    • I didn't exactly fall for that Fox News garbage either, I read the article from jun 2000 about using screen printers to as a way to manufacture OLED's. The previous [slashdot.org] OLED article on slashdot was pretty good too.
  • since this is using organic light emitting DIODES, does this mean that they can be wired back to back to create spray on transistors? Ultracheap custom chips... just gotta figure out how to solder onto paper.
    • does this mean that they can be wired back to back to create spray on transistors? Ultracheap custom chips

      Spray on transistors are almost there [technologyreview.com]. (The linked article mentions some spray on circuitry but the (fast) transistors are rubber-stamped, they're still working on spraying those). The folks described here [ieee.org] are doing spray-on polymer transistors.

      Hmm, couple the LEDs, the transistors and some good optical sensors and you can make yourself a cloak of invisibility...
  • This is good for all low power devices, but the problem is you still need another layer producing the colours or monochrome display.
    This technology could probably replace the backlighting methods used today, but as another poster mentioned, it can only display static images printed on it.

    The real breakthrough will be when they can manipulate an image on it, Colour or not.

  • I think Microsoft should include this innovative technology in their Certificates of Authenticity. Five years from now, Billy will claim that Microsoft invented the technology and then they can monopolize and squash the printing industry. This will be very good for the consumer, who will now have less choices and more Microsoft taxes on just about every product on the market, because just about every product involves printed materials. And this will keep the economy strong.

    (Yeah, Billy's economy that is.)

  • For those of us who care... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Quizme2000 ( 323961 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @07:02PM (#2560986) Homepage Journal
    Not trusting the headline whores at fox news, I did a little searching on google and found this article [arizona.edu] published in June of 2000. It has a better review of the actually technology from a pure science point of view, rather than the "marketing press release as if it were a product" garbage that was posted.
  • I imagine this technology will find its way onto billboards - no external power requried, just a small solar cell or battery. How about luminescent posters - this will do wonders for political candidates and rock bands!

    Yet another example of technology working for the good of all. /end sarcasm/

  • so what happens? (Score:3, Funny)

    by night_flyer ( 453866 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @07:05PM (#2561000) Homepage
    Ultimately, the technology could lead to computer monitors that you fold up and put in your pocket like a handkerchief.

    when you accidently blow your nose with it?
  • What if each pixel or colour responded to a unique radio frequency?

    Problem would be to calibrate/program the pixels to respond, which could be overcome I'm sure.

    Just imagine pinning a giant piece of plastic to your wall and watching Matrix for the 15th time.
  • This article says they've created a way to print static glowing pictures to a page. That's a far cry from CRT functionality (i.e. a dynamic display capable of changing states very frequently to produce moving pictures). For all we know they "glow up" and "glow down" times of these OLEDs could be so slow that you couldn't squeeze any useful refresh rates out of them.
  • I think the neater application for these conducting=(and semiconducting) ink technologies is do-it-yourself hardware. I pretty sure you could print out an early microprocessor (say an 8088) onto a sheet of legal-sized paper with a good-resolution inkjet.

    Why?

    Well, besides the inherent coolness factor, it would make all this talk of "hardware encryption" mildly irrelevant.

  • hey this stuff would be neat to integrate into your clothing, you could have some kind of display on your forearm or the like, combined with flexible solar panels and peizoelectric inserts in your shoes...maybe the makings for a low cost, low power wearable? or maybe for those of you that are down with this kind of shizz, banner advertising across your back and chest? -
  • This was done in June of 2000 by Epson-Sieko (yes the printer people) and CDT, a British company that researches OLEDs and similar crap.

    Google brings up some resulst verifiying this but unfortunately the real copies are down - heres what google has cached [google.com].

    The prototype colour display has been made using CDTâs red, green and blue polymer materials and an industry first ink-jet printing process developed for the project.

  • Mandatory Disclaimer will read: (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Warning: Printing The Sun may cause permanent eye damage.

  • Electronic Ink & Paper Article (Score:3, Informative)

    by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @08:07PM (#2561215) Homepage
    November's Scientic American has an article [sciam.com] about two competing technologies for electronic displays on paper (in addition to the UoA stuff cited here).

    Rather than illumination, they use electrified pigments or rotaing, embedded spheres to change the color of a sheet of plastic. One difference with the technology at UoA is that charge is only needed to change the image, not maintain it. One of the developers described it as "paper that prints itself," which gives you an idea of what kind of applications it could be used for (e.g. hourly updated price signs=good. Monitor to watch a live video stream=bad).


  • A few months back - someone, somewhere posted an article related to the work one of the printer manufacturers was doing with LEP (Light emitting polymers?) The result would something rather like a display that could be printed on plain paper. Anyone have that link? I Goggled for like half an hour without finding it (it's been a slow day here.)

    This stuff is so much like that mentioned in Stephenson's The Diamond Age - it's remarkable.

    In a year - you'll be finding glowing Marlboro adds in a copy of your favorite magazine.
    • Trying to remember all of Diamond Age's features, but Sarah Zettel's Fool's War had a similar paper replacement technology ("films"). Her's had embedded sensors to read data written via a stylus, automatic connection to the local (spaceport) LAN, and a security lock that turned a stack of films into a rigid, inert chunk of plastic that couldn't be read.

      The bit I liked best was a stylus that you could highlight a chunk of text into, carry around in your pocket, and paste into another film or workstation. After reading that chapter, I caught myself trying to do that with my Palm and PC!

    • Just for fun check out this story from Cutting The Edge [cuttingtheedge.com]:

      http://www.cuttingtheedge.com/qtakes/2001/foldable _lcd/foldable.shtm [cuttingtheedge.com]

      Going to the list of articles [cuttingtheedge.com] you can see that this was featured back at the end of July. Sometimes it takes a long time for neat stuff to leak out.

  • Here's where Fox got the story from, for those that would rather avoid any contact with FOX and go straight to the source.

    http://www.azstarnet.com/star/mon/11112tinylights2 ftse2fmst2f.html [azstarnet.com]

    Fox is pretty much the sleaze of the earth... kind of like what would become of an AOL/MSNBC/National Enquirer/Hustler mega-merger.

    This is the network that runs "NASA never got us on the moon" stories posing as news, just when special interest groups are lobbying Congress to privatize NASA and "open" space to responsible development (not).

    Fox is as important to the GOP (Republicans) as "the games" were to the Romans.

  • For all of you complaining about getting power to the traces ;)
  • Is it too much to ask for pictures? really? its hard to get excited about something if i cant see it.
  • Remember when Chromium was all the rage? I can't wait for some comic to come with a light up cover. Spawn 200, anybody? Maybe it will recreate the boom that we last saw in 1993, and we'll actually get some good titles coming out.

    I'm sure this will prove useful for toys and trading cards too. Maybe cards with a docking station that makes them light up so you can see them? I'm sure it can be made into the gimmicky toy that many other good technologies wind up as.(Like 3-D, rotary engines, and Polaroid Cameras)

  • Flexible EL products already available (Score:4, Interesting)

    by andzik ( 473140 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @09:48PM (#2561449)
    This is a completely blatant plug, but it is on topic. There is an EL technology that allows for a paper-thin cold light source. The first one we have produced is a "Linux" lamp. I have video of one on our web site http://www.exoticlights.com The lamp not only glows but also is animated. We have a few prototype units for sale.

  • This was done in 1998 (Score:4, Informative)

    by silverarcticsilver ( 536444 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @09:54PM (#2561476)
    When I was a graduate student at UCLA in 1998, I heard of Professor their that already patented the process for using ink-jet printing techology for creating Organic LED devices. The original paper is: S.C. Chang, J. Bharathan, and Y. Yang; "Dual-color polymer LEDs processed by hybrid inkjet printing technology", Appl. Phys. Lett., 73, 2561, (1998). If you want to know more about this, visit Dr Yang's website at http://www.seas.ucla.edu/ms/faculty1/yang-yang.htm l.
  • Ok guys, not every new invention *must* be plugged into your computer in order to be revolutionary.

    This process could obliterate the neon sign industry.

    And bring Stephenson's "Loglo" a big step closer to reality as every available surface gets plastered in pulsing lights.
  • Sure ads a new dimension to powersaving computers when you can turn off all other light sources in the room. :-)
  • 1. Printers aren't new.
    2. Light emmiting ink isn't new.
    Just pour 2 in a cartridge for 1.
    You should only be aware not to make the system to mesy or your printer might start to glow.

    Cool things aren't invented anymore, just new uses for cool stuff are found.

  • missing info (Score:2, Informative)

    by dragonfly28 ( 466802 )
    there's a lot of info missing from the crappy article linked. I myself are working with OLED's and the way these people represent there results is complete BS!!!
    All this work has already been done a few years ago, and they dont mention that you still need to have ITO electrodes to keep te thing running/emitting light. And the distance between top/bottom or right to left side is in my idea way too long.

  • Glowing Walls? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lally Singh ( 3427 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @04:21AM (#2562393) Journal
    How about getting drywall presprayed with this stuff? Then you just run a small wire down to your light switch and the ceiling (or all the walls) light up. Power usage down, no need for lamps!


    And most importantly, it'll look like those cool futuristic movies from the 1960s!

  • by allowing bullies to not only put "kick me" signs on unfortunate kids' backs, but give them animated tips on form and ideal kick positioning. They could even tie in dynamic content such as a kick counter, and an automated "principal mode" that would change it to match the color of the wearer's shirt when an authority figure happened by.

    I can see it now; I'll be sitting by a fire, talking to my grandkids...

    "I remember the days when we couldn't change the wallpaper in our house without walking 10 miles to the home improvement store... in the snow... uphill... both ways!"

  • CDT: Inventors of LEP (Score:3, Informative)

    by jamesots ( 214246 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @06:40AM (#2562688) Homepage
    People may like to look at the website of Cambridge Display Technology [cdtltd.co.uk], who invented LEPs.

  • Spiffy (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Y'know this is kewl and all, but it's just what we need: more light! It's bad enough we have enough excess light to see most of the US from orbit. Before we start postering the earth and chroming the moon, let's at least figure out that street and highway lights should point down. Not into the atmosphere.

    Anyone who has lived in the city and moved to the country or vice versa knows what I mean.

    Light Posters?! Yippee. Once this tech becomes available to the yokel population we're going to see huge self lit billboard along the highway. Hope you don't need to see while you drive.

    Anonymous cynic
  • Yay! The U of A's optics department is second to none. Here's the homepage for that department:

    http://www.optics.arizona.edu/Directory/default.as p [arizona.edu]

    The FoxNews article is pretty slim, and I can't find "paper-thin OLED" on that departmental page, though I suspect the "Administrative and Research Web Sites [arizona.edu]" link would be a good start...
  • At the lab where I worked we needed a radioactive test pattern for a PET scanner, so I hit on the idea of filling an old inkjet cartridge with oxygen-15 labelled water.

    The half-life is only a few minutes, but that's long enough for the print to dry and to run the test.

    Don't try this at home though, we had 10cm thick lead to put the printer behind!

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