Teaching requires all your wit and candor every day. When the copy machine takes more than you have, it kind of wrecks you. Since I started teaching in 1997, I have had a love/hate relationship with copiers and printers. It can be so cool when you have a crisp, stapled presentation ready for 30 kids stacked flush on your desk ready to deliver. It’s even better when the print actually enhances the learning transaction and the standard is internalized as a result.
More often than that though paper sucks.
Eight times out of 10 when I get my stuff to the copy room, there is a jammed sign on it. Other times it is out of paper in which case I have to use my valuable prep time getting cut on the box and opening reams to load in the machine. Even more frustrating are the times when there is a line of 3 or more of my colleagues all holding their holy grails of lessons in their arms waiting impatiently for the one in front to gather her/his business out of the way. Let me assure you, youll wish you were in hell if YOU are the one who jams the machine with those lines watching over your shoulder.
I’ve often avoided the copier issues by printing the stuff at my computer. We have Brother laser printers and they often work well. It’s never mattered how many trees I massacred as long as the ink was dark and flowed freely, which up to now it always has.
Alas, printers like people, get old I’m afraid. They need routine operations and recently, two in needed to be taken to a nearby cliff (if we had one in the desert) and put out of their misery. I’m speaking of one-half printing. Sound familiar? Lines streaking? Drum light flashing Morse code?
At one point a couple years back, I had all these wonderful road-blocks to getting my lessons taught. You know what I decided? I decided instead of cursing the printing darkness, to light a candle. I declared power over paper.
It would no longer control me!
Solvent Based Continuous Ink Jet Digital Printing: This technology has been adapted to mark on a variety of industrial products including PCBs. With these systems a continuous stream of ink droplets is applied to the desired location using electromagnetic fields. Although solvent based inks produce permanent marks on porous surfaces, it may not be permanent on non-porous surfaces.
Many industries are today using lasers to engrave marks onto a variety of industrial parts. Lasers have been used to engrave marks onto PC boards with limited success due to the lack of contrast of the resulting mark. Some further experiments are taking place to overcome and one of them is to have the circuit boards printed with ink patches.
