Many people have a disdain for inkjet printers, they believe that they are annoying. As it turns out, it is indeed possible to turn annoying things in to interesting machinery. Meet FireWriter 1.0, an inkjet printer that prints using actual fire. Called a graphic butane/propane torch printer built with Processing and Arduino, it is made from a hacked inkjet printer controller via an Arduino Uno. The fire bit is provided by a Dremel torch that has a butane/propane mix. The precision, duration and strength of the flame can be manually controlled through a pitch, in real time. There’s an added calibration model built using an optical sensor as well.
Lucien Langton of ECAL, the University of Art and Design Lausanne, is behind the FireWriter. The printer is capable of horizontally printing a black and white image pixel for pixel. Simply hold the FireWriter against the surface that is to be printed upon and then guide it line by line through the calibrated wheels. It is capable of printing on walls, plastic, wood and fabric without setting them on fire, which is quite interesting as the butane/propane mixture burns at approximately 1,200 degrees centigrade.
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