Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenPrinter

opentools.studio

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 299 posts

Re: OpenPrinter

#101

Post by bitwize »

taneq wrote: post #90
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #83

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.

Pen plotters could accept sheets of A4 and very precisely position them since at least the 80s. I'm surprised that dot-matrix printers didn't adopt similar technologies sooner, though it could be because by the mid-80s dot-matrix printers were the budget option, fanfold paper with the tractor strips was still abundant, and it was much easier to just stick with the cheaply manufacturable technologies rather than take the risk of innovation with a product that wouldn't sell upmarket anyway.

Re: OpenPrinter

#102

Post by cwillu »

williadc wrote: post #37

I had an Epson Ecotank for a couple of years. The printer heads got clogged all the time. We bought a series of cleaning products to address it, they often solved the problem for only a few prints. We finally gave up and bought a Brother laser printer. This project seems like it's trying to address a similar market to the Ecotank. What assurances can the project team provide that OpenPrinter will have better reliabil…

It sounds like OpenPrinter will be using existing ink cartridges with the print heads built-in; I presume they will therefore have the same reliability.

Re: OpenPrinter

#103

Post by labcomputer »

ldoughty wrote: post #31
pbronez wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why HP would want to do that. They have huge margins on ink, right? I’m sure the increase in cartridge sales would offset lost subscription revenue from useless cloud services, if only because the people who are gonna use an open source printer would never pay for that anyway.

Looks like the intended use case here is you buy the cartridge once, and refill it, and OpenPrinter won't lock you out after doing so like HP does.

Yea, but then the print head clogs up after the second time you refill it and you buy another expensive print head + ink from HP.

Frankly, I think 99% of the reason they started integrating the print head with the cartridge was to avoid all the problems you so frequently see on printers that don’t use disposable heads.

Re: OpenPrinter

#104

Post by tokai »

mrsssnake wrote: post #88

Does "open source" even mean something anymore, or should we give up and just accept it as common catch-all phrase for everything that suck less, without one definition? Open source AI without a source. Open source software, oh but only up to 4000 users after two years of release for people on south hemisphere. Now open source hardware but your copies of design are for noncommercial use, only our copies are not restr…

Open source was always a ploy to water down libre/free.

Re: OpenPrinter

#105

Post by worik »

lima wrote: post #96
phoronixrly wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

Non commercial licenses are not generally considered open source

Yes

But how important?

Re: OpenPrinter

#106

Post by qingcharles »

Snacklive wrote: post #73
zerobees wrote: post #69

I think the top-ranking comment about complexity is off base: they're not inventing inkjet printing from scratch. It's basically a bunch of existing modules in a new package, presumably with the promise that you will not need to buy subscriptions or DRMed ink cartridges. Is robustness and reparability a compelling pitch? If I'm counting right, I owned eight different printers in my life. Dot matrix, dye sublimation,…

Do you have any recommendations for models or what should i look out for ? My mom wanted a printer for her birthday and it's been a few months without any success when it comes to selecting the right model

I would highly recommend getting a laser, especially if she isn't doing a huge amount of printing. You can leave them forever without printing and they'll just spin up and work in an instant. Both B+W and color ones are really decently priced these days.

Re: OpenPrinter

#107

Post by Fnoord »

Hanging it on a wall like that would be great in say a tiny house / limited space. But what about dust entry? I got cats.

Re: OpenPrinter

#108

Post by __float »

worik wrote: post #105
lima wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non commercial licenses are not generally considered open source

Yes But how important?

If it is not an open source license, you should not call it open source.

Imagine someone saying the same thing about MongoDB's license, for example.

Re: OpenPrinter

#109

Post by jnaina »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #95
rubidium wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I found that original comment to be a bit nonsensical. It would be like arguing you can't build your own PC because the lithography tech needed to make modern ICs is really complicated. I wasn't planning a laying out my own chip, and these guys aren't planning on building their own printhead from scratch.

yes, I was about to build another gaming PC, and then I remembered the ASML machine costs 20 bajillion. Will wait for the ASML machine to come down in price, to around couple of grand.

Re: OpenPrinter

#110

Post by eKIK »

williadc wrote: post #37

I had an Epson Ecotank for a couple of years. The printer heads got clogged all the time. We bought a series of cleaning products to address it, they often solved the problem for only a few prints. We finally gave up and bought a Brother laser printer. This project seems like it's trying to address a similar market to the Ecotank. What assurances can the project team provide that OpenPrinter will have better reliabil…

I have an Ecotank and my parents have one too (data set size of 2 :). I've had it for 4-5 years now and it's superb for my simple use case (occasional low cost printing at home).

I did initially run into clogged heads too, until I scheduled a test print every month which uses all colors. That way no single color stays unused for too long, and it's been working like a charm ever since.

If the heads are already "degraded" there are two (or more?) cleaning programs available from within the official printer driver settings dialog. They did resolve my initial issues.

Epson could definitely do a better job of informing users though by slapping a big warning on the thing saying "you need to print something every X days to avoid issues".

Post reply on HN