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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?

#51

Post by dddddaviddddd »

I work with inkjet printers in research for my Masters program. I found the three blog posts about printing on this blog to be helpful: https://www.kylescholz.com/

The author describes their work to make a very simple DIY inkjet printer for under $1000. While they are using a nozzle that they purchased, you can make a similar one yourself (check out the book "Microdrop generation" by Eric Lee).

All-in-all it's fairly complicated just to start printing droplets, to say nothing of scaling beyond a single nozzle or precisely moving the printhead.

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

#53

Post by IanSanders »

gbrown wrote: post #37
teddyh wrote: post #36

I wish that the intelligence in printers would migrate back to the computer. Having printers with their own complex formats (PCL, PostScript, etc.) only makes them inscrutable and lends itself to proprietary competing formats and printouts which never gets quite right. I think the original NeXT machine was on the right track with their simple bitmap-only laser printer, where the PostScript processing was done on the…

Given the size of the damn drivers you’d think this was already the case.

When the manufacturer of your printer offers a "driver-only" download, rather than "complete customer experience" version, it is quite small. Also linux.

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

#54

Post by adwn »

wegs wrote: post #33
detaro wrote: post #6

Printers are cheap and widely available, which leaves a DIY printer which is going to be slower, more error-prone and more expensive as a very niche idea. There is a clear benefit to buying or building an open hobby 3D printer, whereas that's harder to argue for a 2D one - while there is a lot of crap around, there's enough workable choices, aftermarket inks/toner works, you likely won't be modifying/tuning a 2D prin…

I don't think this is quite right. An open source 2d printer would allow for a lot of things commercial printers don't allow for. For example, I'd like to be able to print on things which are not paper. If I had an inkjet head mounted on something, there's a ton I could do with it, from modifying it to print directly on fabric, to integrating it with other fabrication technologies to make decorated objects. Even a CN…

> An open source 2d printer would allow for a lot of things commercial printers don't allow for. For example, I'd like to be able to print on things which are not paper.

Those kinds of printers already exist commercially. The argument is the same: Printing on clothes or PCBs might be cool, but crappy DIY printers that can do that are even more niche than crappy DIY printers that print on paper.

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

#55

Post by tgflynn »

In a world where screens are everywhere who needs printers ?

I doubt I've printed out more than 100 documents in the last 20 years.

There are still a few legacy areas where nothing else will do like legal procedures and shipping labels but for the most part printers just don't seem like a broadly useful enough technology to interest most open source enthusiasts.

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

#56

Post by timonoko »

I have Samsung CLP-310 Color Laser Printer from 2008. It was the last one ever, which you can force-reset so it does count how many times a color cassette been used. I can refill those cassettes from half liter buckets from ebay for €10. It is just incredibly reliable.

One and only problem is that only the XP-windows Samsung printer drivers work truly well. But I have 2008 laptop for that.

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

#57

Post by kiba »

teknopaul wrote: post #21
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…

bit of a non-argument this. Existence of cheap alternatives misses the point of opensource, its not about cost. ref: free as in beer vs free as in speech.

It's a matter of ROI.

There isn't much return or expertise on building an open source 2D printer, as opposed to 3D printers.

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

#58

Post by mattmaroon »

imglorp wrote: post #47
detaro wrote: post #6

Printers are cheap and widely available, which leaves a DIY printer which is going to be slower, more error-prone and more expensive as a very niche idea. There is a clear benefit to buying or building an open hobby 3D printer, whereas that's harder to argue for a 2D one - while there is a lot of crap around, there's enough workable choices, aftermarket inks/toner works, you likely won't be modifying/tuning a 2D prin…

How about laser engraving tech? Can a laser engraver be tight focused to 300 dpi and power set (or sensed) to just make a mark on white paper? Does the positioning accuracy also need to be improved to get that 300 dpi? You'd never run out of toner at least. Edit, answered at least one question: yes engravers do 500 dpi routinely. Here's one: https://www.troteclaser.com/en-us/knowledge/tips-for-laser-u...

Or we could get rid of paper and just print everything on plywood.

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

#59

Post by salawat »

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...

cough I'll just leave this here. Want some coffee, two sugars, right?

Point being, there are quite a few alternative use cases that commodity printers have going on under the covers that no one tends to talk about all that much. There's forensic watermarking for one but also supposedly certain features hard-coded in where if it detects it in an input, it intentionally leaves it out as an anti-counterfeiting measure. The article for that one was floating around on HN a while ago. I'll see if I can dredge it up.

Making copies is one of those things where there are several opportunities for power consolidation to be had if you look hard enough.

It's like the whole issue with 3d printing of guns. No one in an authoritative position necessarily wants everyone to have the capability to generate at will perfect duplication of information due to the consequences that spells for several entrenched, high relative value use cases.

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

#60

Post by Fnoord »

pjmlp wrote: post #49
teknopaul wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bit of a non-argument this. Existence of cheap alternatives misses the point of opensource, its not about cost. ref: free as in beer vs free as in speech.

99% of FOSS consumers only care about free beer, hence the uptake on MIT like licenses.

Where did you derive that number from?
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