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Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

#161

Post by Vrondi »

gonzo41 wrote: post #82
lpfabiani wrote: post #7

I 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…

You need an 1980s Daisy Wheel Printer. Problem solved.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

#163

Post by COGlory »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #121
_def wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the money is in professional printing, ads, designers, etc. And ink cartridges

That model is juuuuuust about dead. Canon/Lexmark/HP are now all pushing megatank/ecotank continuous ink systems. I bought a Canon Pixma G6020 for printing photos and I'm super pleased with it. It comes with enough ink to do 18,000 black and white pages and 6000 full color pages. Refills are around $40 for the set.

Unless the design has changed, there is a pad that absorbs overflow ink from cleaning the print heads. After some time, that pad will be full, and then the printer will refuse to ever print again.

I've now had 2 Pixma G series break that way, with a third well set on that course.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

#164

Post by dylan604 »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #94
Nbox9 wrote: post #90

Earlier 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.

that brings back memories of the school lab in the early 90s. didn't get enough time in the chair on a shared terminal to debug completely, so everyone printed to greenbar and would debug from there. i even got to the point of writing code on college ruled paper by hand, and then transcribing it once i got to the lab. taking typing early in high school definitely paid off. people made fun of me for being the only male student in the class, but i knew it would be a useful skill and put up with the jokes.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

#165

Post by slow_donkey »

mickael-kerjean wrote: post #105
Fnoord wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 [1] https://github.com/mickael-…

I was just looking for an s3 browser. Will give this a whirl

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

#166

Post by drewg123 »

pwinnski wrote: post #148

On October 23, 2012, I paid $133.76 for a "Brother HL-2270DW Compact Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex" and I have only ever used $12-15 third-party toner cartridges with it. I had to buy a replacement drum unit in 2016, that was $22.59 (third party, of course). I find it unlikely that an open-source DIY printer is going to result in something better or cheaper than what I've got.

The one thing that it would do is to eliminate the search for a well supported printer on linux, as you would know that the open source ones were well supported.

The situation that always seems to happen to me is I need a printer ASAP. When shopping, I might find support for the Brother HL-2270DW in linux, but my local store might have a "Brother HL-2275DW" in stock (made up model number). So I'm wondering if the driver for the 2270 will work on the 2275, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

#167

Post by ho_schi »

Nbox9 wrote: post #90
kevstev wrote: post #86

Earlier 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…

I remember the paper jams but currently most consumer printers die through built-in obsolesce before the paper jams happen often.

We're trained to spent much more money for business laptops and probably we should for printers, too? Well handled ThinkPads last for many years and when the hardware struggles to execute the software in decent speed they - remain to work. Lenovo (and IBM) make money with reliable hardware.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

#168

Post by jakeva »

mickael-kerjean wrote: post #105
Fnoord wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 [1] https://github.com/mickael-…

I'm confused, would you be making a pretty good salary or would you be making more money flipping burgers?

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

#169

Post by gaze »

It's the nozzle. Let's suppose you really wanted to design your own nozzle... you could use something like MUMPS, which is $5,800 for 15 dice, plus 100 for each additional. You have to wrestle together 15 people to pay 400 bucks (or 20 to pay 300, and so forth) for a printhead that probably won't work. Figure it'll take several iterations and everyone needs to be in for thousands and thousands of dollars.

It's doable but only among a group of very wealthy hobbyists.

People with this kinda money typically gravitate towards high vacuum projects and microwave electronics

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

#170

Post by gaze »

gaze wrote: post #169

It's the nozzle. Let's suppose you really wanted to design your own nozzle... you could use something like MUMPS, which is $5,800 for 15 dice, plus 100 for each additional. You have to wrestle together 15 people to pay 400 bucks (or 20 to pay 300, and so forth) for a printhead that probably won't work. Figure it'll take several iterations and everyone needs to be in for thousands and thousands of dollars. It's doable…

This is ignoring all the high-speed cameras and lab equipment for characterizing the electrical and rheological properties of the ink you shoot through it...
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