Non-permanent or fade-away printing?

[shari]

Are there any toners or special papers for laserjet printers which will result in the printed material fading away after some period (say a month). I have seen thermal printing (like in ATMs) work this way. Is this possible with laser printing?

the reason I ask is that we all make so many draft copies of documents for reviews etc. which dont have a use after two weeks or so. They could be reused for printing, instead of the shredding that we do now.

Thanks

[dekard]

The technology wouldn't really support something like this. The solids used in the toner are fused to the surface of the paper and it would be difficult to work with the build up on the page. Any flacking the would occur would result in a build up inside the printer, requiring frequent cleaning.

[LaserTech]

There are a couple types of toner..but laser toner is permenant.

MICR toner is used by banks or people doing large check runs and has a magnetic element mixed in to allow certain bank process equipment to read numbers from checks.

running paper through the pressure and heat that it must tolerat in a laser printer also changes the paper a bit...drying it out mostly. running paper more than 2 or three times through a printer generally starts to cause issues.