The absolute majority of the inhabitants of the developed countries of the world are familiar with the term "3D printing". And what in this case means 2.5D-printing? At the international exhibition of advanced technologies Ceatec Japan, the Japanese company Casio introduced the Mofrel printing technology and a printer based on it. This technology allows you to give a different texture to specially prepared surfaces. At the end of the work, the printer applies paint with 16 million colours.

The target audience of the new printer is the designers. The Mofrel technology will enable them to simulate textures of textiles, wood, stone and ceramics on special "digital sheets". Outwardly they look like ordinary sheets of paper, but they contain a layer of micro powder containing a hydrocarbon and acrylonitrile, techcult.ru reports.

Under the influence of the heat of the printer, the sheet expands, changing the external texture to the figure needed by the designer, after which the heat source is turned off and the pattern remains. To better control the formation of the texture, the pattern is first printed on the surface of the sheet in the form of a carbon microfilm. Then the carbon particles under the influence of IR radiation focus the heat on the necessary sections of the microlayer of the powder. The whole process takes from 3 to 5 minutes.

At Casio, it is hoped that 2.5D-printing technology will be in demand by smartphone manufacturers to apply unusual patterns with different textures to the case. It is also possible that in the next two years there will be a version available to ordinary consumers. The cost of the industrial printer Casio 2.5D presented at the exhibition is 44,000 dollars.