Because 2D printing is serious?
Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
111–120 of 250 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also wouldn't underestimate the challenge of moving paper. I once spoke to someone who worked for Kodak (or a similar company - it was a long time ago) who said that they acquired another printer company purely because their paper moving technology was excellent and it would have taken years to develop an equivalent quality of engineering internally. This was before the present day race to the bottom in the printer…
If you haven't read it already, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/why-paper-jams... is a lot of fun.
Excellent long-form popular technical(ish) article; well worth the read.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#113Friendly 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.
Thanks for point this out. In my head it's always Richard 'Mainline' Stallman, like a competitive video game handle, no idea why.. I knew it was absolutely wrong but never cared enough to Google it. Now I know.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a burst of creative thought, thinking about getting a typewriter and hooking up a ton of actuators to it so I could just slide it an array of a document to type out. But it'd probably move to fast or slow, jam and then there's feeding it paper. It'd probably be easier to make a nice block alphabet for a plotter and then just print your documents as biro drawings. But again, feeding paper seems like a very fiddl…
You could look into the IBM Selectric - the typing element is a ball so it can't jam, and it's actuated by little cables that might be hackable. Feed it paper off of a roll, and you have your jam-free, continuous printing solution :)
A few years ago I took apart my Correcting Selectric III with exactly this aim. IIRC there are around six levers which can be actuated in different combinations to select and imprint all of the symbols on the type ball. I had a lot of fun selecting them by hand to try to map all of the combinations.
IBM must have had this use in mind because they actually made a variation of the Selectric design that could be used as a serial terminal. We have one in storage at work but I think the mechanism is seized. Wikipedia has a surprisingly long section about modifying the Selectric to work as a computer terminal[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter#Use_a...
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#115A FDM 3D printer is mechanically relatively simple; it's more akin to a 3D plotter: it's a vector thing. Household 2D printers do bitmaps. There's 3D bitmap printers as well, like the SLA resin printers and laser sintering. The bitmap thing at a high resolution requires higher precision equipment than a typical 3D printer which makes it more difficult to do as a hobbyist. Not impossible, but a factor.
Yes, I learned a lot about inverse kinematics when I was upgrading my 3d printer to be used as a 2d plotter (simply printing a pen holder and figuring out how to create the GCODE).
Drawing a circle with X/Y stepper motors is more involved than you'd think. You can either resolve every step with a high resolution (command the steppers to move fractions of a millimeter at a time), or approximate the curve and let the printer do its own IK to figure out how to best represent them in real space.
Both have advantages/disadvantages. The high resolution approach can product more accurate lines, but can sometimes require more computation than the little MCU is capable of (which can cause inaccuracy of plotting as the printer fails to keep up)
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the money is in professional printing, ads, designers, etc. And ink cartridges
Ink cartridges is only a $1B global industry [0]. That isn’t a small market, but the global printing industry, with all digital content being transferred onto any 2d mediums through automatic means is probably closer to $1T. Think about every book, every magazine, every coffee mug with a funny saying, every graphic TShirt. In the world. The ink cartridges are good money, but it’s not where the money is at. [0] https:…
That actually upsets me more: we're beset by stupid DRM and price-gouging on ink, and it's not even that profitable?
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 rel…
Are you stating your last two sentences as the result of researching these issues?
Because as a layperson, I would not have thought a company could get a patent on clicking a button to purchase an item online.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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've found the same thing. It's also a great excuse to get the rainbow pack of highlighters!
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#119reading through the comments here the answer seems to be: good printers are cheap and nozzles are hard.
But how about the openwrt-approach? Keep the printer with the good nozzle and starting with the software such a cheap printer runs, trying to get that foss first - jailbreaking your printer if you will. Or swapping the board for a raspberry pi or similar? That would at least help against closed drivers, cartridge restrictions, page counters etc.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#120I worked for a while in the R&D department of HP printer division. As @jacquesm said, good 2D printer costs peanuts. The amount of R&D in color quality, speed and other parameters is huge. There were a lot of teams involved: mechanical, electrical, software, chemical... And because of that investment, there are thousands of patents that the big players are continuously paying each other for. It's a very old market wi…
I had a burst of creative thought, thinking about getting a typewriter and hooking up a ton of actuators to it so I could just slide it an array of a document to type out. But it'd probably move to fast or slow, jam and then there's feeding it paper. It'd probably be easier to make a nice block alphabet for a plotter and then just print your documents as biro drawings. But again, feeding paper seems like a very fiddl…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_wheel_printing
Daisy wheel printers were slow, loud, and had huge limits (no kerning, single typeface, no printing family photos), but the print quality was good. And if you are the kind of person who likes mechanical keyboard sounds, the sound of a daisy wheel printer is pretty cool.