91–100 of 299 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It really makes more sense to just buy a laser printer, in almost all cases.
Yeah conceptually this excites me but I decided color printing wasn't worth it at home years ago and haven't regretted it.
Been waiting for framework to make a regular 2D printer, of any kind, would buy at least two instantly. I will never, never, never buy a fing printer from hp/canon/epson/brother/etc with anti-consumer tech, I rather die.
https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/printers/#Cheap%20used%20laser...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have enormous respect for dot matrix printers. They're easy to repair and service, the tech is relatively simple, it's cheap, it's parts are cheap, its supplies are cheap. It's way more sustainable than any other printer: both the printer itself in its manufacturing and the ribbons themselves. The waste they produce is also much less polluting than any other printer.
They also kind of suck. I'm not one for "the latest and greatest", but their output quality is atrocious compared to modern printers, they're loud AF, and I'm guessing it may have existed but I never saw a dot matrix that didn't have the perforated edge for feeding.
They're noisier than ink printers, but non-industrial quality can be pretty reasonable for office-level noises.
Quality certainly isn't on par with laser printers, but for text (both Latin and CJK), it's perfectly clear.
Interesting comment from last time this was posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48093670 Inkjet printing requires orders of magnitude more engineering expertise, materials science, industry experience and financial resources than most people imagine. That is the reason, open inkjet printers don't exist despite having been consumer products with the same drawbacks for more than forty years. That is why this is…
99% of this is the printhead and the ink formulation. Assuming you use generic off the shelf solutions for those two components you’re set. All the printer companies do their lock in at the firmware and software layer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the specs: Compatible cartridges HP 63 and HP 63 XL (US) HP 302 and HP 302 XL (Europe) HP 803 and HP 803 XL (Asia) So they just use HP inkjet technology. That makes it less open-source, but even "open source" parts are going to be under non-commercial license (CC BY-NC-SA) anyway.
> even "open source" parts are going to be under non-commercial license (CC BY-NC-SA) anyway You're saying this as if it is a bad thing? I absolutely welcome this decision by the authors!
> Open Printer is distributed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. So not open source.
For some reason the 8 image grid only loads the first image, maybe there's no images to load?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They also kind of suck. I'm not one for "the latest and greatest", but their output quality is atrocious compared to modern printers, they're loud AF, and I'm guessing it may have existed but I never saw a dot matrix that didn't have the perforated edge for feeding.
I think that’s a product of their time rather than the dot matrix tech itself. Paper feeding is hard . Tractor strips made it easier.
A lot of car shops with regular 100% humidity conditions will swear by dot matrix + tractor for feeding paper + printing. Plus, the carbon copy forms are guaranteed to be exact carbon copies which also leads to legal guarantees about copies of paper being provably exactly the same in the court of law.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can't make a commercial competitor of this printer using their design Which means it's not open source. Open source means you have the right to distribute work however you want, including commercially, provided you also provide the source under the same license terms as the original. The second you slap a non-commercial limitation on there, it ceases to be open source.
Of course it's not open source, there's no source to even be open or closed yet! It is Creative Commons, though, which is different.
The existence of a service manual doesn't mean you can get parts once the company disappears or loses interest.