Printer News

The U.S. Postal Service ended the second quarter of its 2014 fiscal year (Jan. 1, 2014 – March 31, 2014) with a net loss of $1.9 billion. This marks the 20th of the last 22 quarters it has sustained a loss.

If you think books are old tech, you may be dismissing them too soon. The latest application for the folio design is a collection of water filters that are long-lasting and also provide information about consuming unsafe water. The humanitarian group WaterisLife and the ad agency DDB have teamed up to bring these books to developing countries with unreliable water sources.

Working with researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Virginia, WaterisLife and DDB supported scalability work and design based on research conducted by Teri Dankovich for her Ph.D. at McGill University.

While the counterfeiting business used to be specialized, these days it's easy for anyone with a printer to give it a try. And that's just what's happening in the United States. 

According to Bloomberg: "Statistics highlight the growth: In 1995, less than 1 percent of fake bills were produced on digital printers. In the last fiscal year, nearly 60 percent of the $88.7 million in counterfeit currency recovered in the United States was created using inkjet or laser printers, the Secret Service says."

RR Donnelley & Sons Company, Chicago, reported financial results for the first quarter of 2014.

Net sales in the quarter were $2.7 billion, up $135.3 million, or 5.3 percent, from the first quarter of 2013, largely due to the acquisition of Consolidated Graphics.

RR Donnelley & Sons Company, Chicago, has been awarded a $175 million multi-year agreement by F+W Media Inc. that renews and significantly expands the companies' relationship through 2021.

EFI, Fremont, Calif., recently acquired Group Rhapso S.A. (Rhapso), a printing and packaging software solutions developer based in Les Ulis, France.

Deluxe Corporation, a leader in providing small businesses and financial institutions with products and services to drive customer revenue, announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2014.

Tax Collector Mike Fasano has fired a printing contractor that mistakenly sent out nearly 2,000 auto vehicle registrations to Pasco County, Fla., residents with the wrong personal information on them. 

Fasano said the vendor, CASS Data and Mailing Services of Fort Walton Beach, was responsible for printing more than 30,000 tag renewal notices each month for his office.

"We're bringing all of the printing services in-house beginning next month," Fasano said. "I just wish we could have done it sooner."

Buyouts and layoffs don't scare John Crawford, the recently appointed managing director of plant operations at the Government Printing Office.

"If you don't change, you get left behind," Crawford said, climbing the stairs at the GPO's North Capitol Street Northwest headquarters after inspecting a state-of-the-art digital press churning out glossy voter guides for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Crawford joined the GPO at age 25, taking a pay cut in the move from the private to public sector. He is the third generation of his family to work at the GPO.

Most consumer 3-D printers use "ink" made of colored plastic line.

 But despite the self-reliant and Earth-friendly bent of many 3-D printing hobbyists, it's surprisingly difficult to find 3-D printing line, or filament, that's made of recycled plastic—even though the type of plastic used, ABS plastic, is easily recyclable from old plastic bottles.

 Now a Seattle-based entrepreneur, Liz Havlin, aims to change that with a machine that turns recycled plastic into filament suitable for loading into any mainstream 3-D printer.