"Allen Mulvey" writes:
> When I took offset printing in college decades ago. We had
> thermal expanding ink. A heat lamp over the output tray
> caused it to expand. It was sometimes used for braille
> printing but I have not heard of it having been used for
> this in recent years. My daughter is visually impaired but
> does not need braille. She works at the Central Association
> for the Blind and visually Impaired in Utica, NY. I'll have
> her ask about this.

	An interesting post. Braille embossers certainly behave
similarly to standard dot-matrix printers, but they are matrix
printers on steroids, the really nasty kinds of steroids. They
have prices that are steroidal, also.

	I used to work for the Oklahoma Library for the Blind in
the mid seventies and we had a Braille embosser there to print
off textbooks and the like for students who needed them. I don't
remember exactly what it cost, but it was a pretty Penny and it
printed out fairly decent Braille when it was not broken down.

	We all know how much electronics have changed since the
seventies, but the science of punching holes halfway through
card-stock hasn't changed that much. After the modern
electronics of great computers, the end result is still some
mechanism banging away on heavy paper.

	Some are very noisy. Others break all the time. Still
others are noisy as they break all the time and all cost a
fortune.

	As a person who does use Braille, I think the real hope
lies in refreshable electronic Braille displays which, today,
are still expensive and fragile, but I keep hoping that some of
the new piezoelectric materials will make it possible to produce
Braille and tactile graphics using techniques that are more
mass-frendly such as a matrix full of piezoelectric goo that
pops up dots when you power a row and column. Right now, each
dot is separately built which is why they are expensive and
fragile.

Martin McCormick
--=20
http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
.