There are many open source pen plotters. Welcome back to the 80s!
Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
171–180 of 250 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#172Earlier 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 :)
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
... because the channels through which the ink is propelled are only microns wide, and the ink volumes which are distributed per drop are in the picoliter range which requires a complex piezo-electric control system.
If this topic turns out to be the start of a FOSS, I'll join as a (senior) design engineer. Find one that doesn't have a patent and reverse engineer it. I imagine the first/original control system was extremely difficult to develop. But since the technology already exists you can reverse engineer it. After that, you pay a supplier to make parts. In my experience, these suppliers will end up redesigning to match bette…
> Find one that doesn't have a patent and reverse engineer it
At this point, it would be better to start looking at expired (and about-to-expire) patents. A circa Y2k printer would be a perfectly acceptable design, IMO.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#174Earlier 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? The impression I get from HN comments is users of monochrome business laser printers from 2000 are the only people who are happy with their printers :)
The fallacy of "they don't build them like they used to" applies equally to bridges from 1850, cars from 1970, and printers from 2000: the poorly built bridges fell down, the cars with inferior parts rusted, and the printers with chronic issues got Office Spaced. So of course only the well-made examples survived.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I cleaned one of those overflow pad assemblies once, on an old Epson. I got several more years out of it. But what a disgusting job cleaning it was. It's a great huge tank with many layers of pads. Do they sell replacements? One guess.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#176Earlier 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…
>> as suffering from constant paper jams and other mechanical malfunctions.
> All of that, including the interfacing are not related to patents.
This seems like a pretty strong statement, can you elaborate as to why solving paper jams wouldn't involve patented IP ?
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're missing the main argument: It would take a lot of money and cross-domain knowledge to design and build a passable printer from scratch. Contrast that with software, where all you need is time and a low to medium power computer. In fact, compared to software open source , all other open source engineering is non-existent (relative to OSS, not in absolute terms).
Why would you design one from scratch? The hardware out there is excellent and inexpensive. Start with that and write the firmware in a similar way that the Magic Lantern group did for cameras.
Embedded systems generally do not allow you to flash custom firmware to them these days, especially for printers as there is money at stake (you could write firmware to support non-vendors Ink/Toner cartridges), or to enable disabled features.
In addition printers contain custom specific IP blocks related to everything from ethernet to scan and print functionality. It is just not feasible for someone to be able to write custom firmware for a printer without access to the hardware documentation for these devices. More sophisticated printers even have multiple CPUs for doing various tasks.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I'm sure it's a challenge, after watching 3D printers evolve over the years, I've no doubt that random people will find unique and amazing ways to handle the problem.
Paper printers have been around for ages though, and decades of R&D have been put into them. 3D printers have started to find a foothold relatively recently.
The FDM 3d printer model took off ONLY because the patents around the FDM printing head expired.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#179I'm actively working on one of these right now. What you are talking about I refer to as 2.5 axis machine vs the traditional 3 axis PLA/FDM printer. Aka a plotter. Using an inkjet cartridge or a laserjet toner on a piece of paper outside the context of the printer it was designed for seems foolhardy at best... but what about moving a pen up and down? Shameless plug, I've been working on a project called Robot Draws Y…
.. I mean I'm working on my own plotter too, but only because I'd like something larger format than my off the shelf axidraw.
There are tons of OS boards and software already developed around this problem, you don't have to do it all yourself.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
#180Earlier 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 did IT work in a big law firm in 1989. The company had a fleet of HP LaserJet Series II printers (that having been introduced in 1987). They worked fine, same as anything today, with regard to jams and whatever. (Mostly, they were used for cranking out documents written in WordPerfect.) Though modern printers are more affordable and capable, the basic physical user experience is about the same. Modern printers don't even look all that different: vanilla boxes with some slanted aperture on top where paper comes out; drawer for blank paper. If I walked into, say, an insurance agency or whatever and they had a HP LJ II from 1989 sitting on a counter in a corner, I probably wouldn't even notice the antique. :)