FabricatINK: Personal fabrication of bespoke displays using electronic ink from upcycled E readers

2022. Ollie Hanton, Zichao Shen, Mike Fraser & Anne Roudaut
Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Abstract

FabricatINK explores the personal fabrication of irregularly-shaped low-power displays using electronic ink (E ink). E ink is a programmable bicolour material used in traditional form-factors such as E readers. It has potential for more versatile use within the scope of personal fabrication of custom-shaped displays, and it has the promise to be the pre-eminent material choice for this purpose. We appraise technical literature to identify properties of E ink, suited to fabrication. We identify a key roadblock, universal access to E ink as a material, and we deliver a method to circumvent this by upcycling broken electronics. We subsequently present a novel fabrication method for irregularly-shaped E ink displays. We demonstrate our fabrication process and E ink’s versatility through ten prototypes showing different applications and use cases. By addressing E ink as a material for display fabrication, we uncover the potential for users to create custom-shaped truly bistable displays.

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Citation

Hanton, O., Shen, Z., Fraser, M., & Roudaut, A. (2022). Fabricatink: personal fabrication of bespoke displays using electronic ink from upcycled e readers. Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–15).

BibTeX

@inproceedings{hanton2022fabricatink,
  title={FabricatINK: Personal fabrication of bespoke displays using electronic ink from upcycled E readers},
  author={Hanton, Ollie and Shen, Zichao and Fraser, Mike and Roudaut, Anne},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  pages={1--15},
  year={2022}
}