what's a 2d printer
Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
101–110 of 250 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of patents? I had tank of an HP laserjet 3 in the 90s, and patent life is 20 years. For the basic functionality, they should all be expired at this point, and the limiting factor at the time was the high cost of memory and compute. Shouldn't anything relevant have expired years ago? The first laserjet came out in 1984 it seems. Prices have come down, but I haven't seen any real innovation in printers (not t…
Do you remember printing in 2000? Literally every printer was suffering from constant paper jams and other mechanical malfunctions. In 2020 a top consumer or business printer will not jam on you. The business printers in 2000 had slow processors and more ram. It was significantly bad that printing PDFs spent more time processing the file than putting toner on page. Finally, the interfacing for printers today is fanta…
Not at all. Things like the Laserjet 4 were workhorses. No planned obsolescence in sight.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of patents? I had tank of an HP laserjet 3 in the 90s, and patent life is 20 years. For the basic functionality, they should all be expired at this point, and the limiting factor at the time was the high cost of memory and compute. Shouldn't anything relevant have expired years ago? The first laserjet came out in 1984 it seems. Prices have come down, but I haven't seen any real innovation in printers (not t…
Do you remember printing in 2000? Literally every printer was suffering from constant paper jams and other mechanical malfunctions. In 2020 a top consumer or business printer will not jam on you. The business printers in 2000 had slow processors and more ram. It was significantly bad that printing PDFs spent more time processing the file than putting toner on page. Finally, the interfacing for printers today is fanta…
>Do you remember printing in 2000? Literally every printer was suffering from constant paper jams and other mechanical malfunctions. In 2020 a top consumer or business printer will not jam on you.
The business printers in 2000 had slow processors and more ram. It was significantly bad that printing PDFs spent more time processing the file than putting toner on page.
All of that, including the interfacing are not related to patents.
It's not like there's some patent issue for using USB or wifi in your printer over whatever interface used in 2000 compared.
Or like there's a patent on using faster processor or more RAM in your printer (two things you've mentioned also).
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big point about OS for me is hackability what if instead of printing ink on paper you want to print fungi spores on jelly.
or names on birthday cakes. cutting guides on wood. UV paint on metal. Jokes on toilet roll :) thinking there might be mileage in this idea. clearly a mod from a 3D printer design would be where to start. standardise ink delivery / modules for different materials with different characteristics. A standardised printer driver for Linux and other platforms would get a lot or re-us.
Open source Pen Plotters/ Pick and Place machines all already exist and are common in the Maker world
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
99% of FOSS consumers only care about free beer, hence the uptake on MIT like licenses.
Where did you derive that number from?
Not parent but if 1% of the people who use my FOSS software [1] did pay for it, I'd be making a pretty good salary. I'm just a datapoint but my contributions don't cover the server cost alone and out of the many companies who did contact me, I've refused almost all of them as I'd be making more money flipping burgers than what they were willing to offer considering the time involvement
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of patents? I had tank of an HP laserjet 3 in the 90s, and patent life is 20 years. For the basic functionality, they should all be expired at this point, and the limiting factor at the time was the high cost of memory and compute. Shouldn't anything relevant have expired years ago? The first laserjet came out in 1984 it seems. Prices have come down, but I haven't seen any real innovation in printers (not t…
Do you remember printing in 2000? Literally every printer was suffering from constant paper jams and other mechanical malfunctions. In 2020 a top consumer or business printer will not jam on you. The business printers in 2000 had slow processors and more ram. It was significantly bad that printing PDFs spent more time processing the file than putting toner on page. Finally, the interfacing for printers today is fanta…
HP Laserjet were pretty good even pre-2000. I spent some time in publishing. And I'd compare it to nowadays paper feed on a $100-250 ink jet, that has couple of springs (id 3mm, L=15mm) that would just fail and the printer won't take paper any longer. Virtually no printer in that price range has replaceable rubber paper rollers.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#107A 3D printer needs only a comparatively simple metal novel, and the rest of the printer is just moving that around, some other things like heating the pad to help things work smoothly, and processing a file into a set of movement instructions for the head.
A 2D printer needs to deal with four or more liquids (ink) or fine pieces of plastic (toner). Rather than just heating the ink up, a tiny electrical current is used to squeeze out a drop at a time. Everywhere the liquid touches can get dried up, and needs to be self-cleaned. And then you have to address the color mixing algorithm, calibration, ICC profiles, etc. There are waste ink absorbers, print heads, etc. many of which involve specialty materials that can only be made in a precision factory, which would not be available for open source development.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm finding myself printing out code more and more these days, highlighting it and marking it up. There's just a different part of my brain that kicks in when I am able to get tactile with something.
I’m going to make a note to try that this week.
Make sure you print that note out.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#109Friendly reminder that rms launched the FLOSS movement because he was incensed when he couldn't program a printer at MIT to do something he wanted.
TIL Richard Stallman's middle name is Matthew.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of patents? I had tank of an HP laserjet 3 in the 90s, and patent life is 20 years. For the basic functionality, they should all be expired at this point, and the limiting factor at the time was the high cost of memory and compute. Shouldn't anything relevant have expired years ago? The first laserjet came out in 1984 it seems. Prices have come down, but I haven't seen any real innovation in printers (not t…
Do you remember printing in 2000? Literally every printer was suffering from constant paper jams and other mechanical malfunctions. In 2020 a top consumer or business printer will not jam on you. The business printers in 2000 had slow processors and more ram. It was significantly bad that printing PDFs spent more time processing the file than putting toner on page. Finally, the interfacing for printers today is fanta…
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