2 questions :
* How can it can do 2-side printing ? (on a normal printer, you may print all the odd pages, turn the whole thing, and print all the even pages)
* Won't the cutter experience some wear ?
OpenPrinter
191–200 of 299 posts
Re: OpenPrinter
#192I 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…
Ecotank printers are worse in terms of clogging problems, because there is a tank and a hose vs a sealed cartridge. The ink has to flow through the entire system and that means you will have to print at least once a week.
Re: OpenPrinter
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Restricting it in this way doesn't make sense to me. If we have a common design them surely we want people to be able to build their own, or buy a prebuilt?
Why is the CC BY-NC-SA stopping me to build my own?
I didn't say it did.
If it is a noncommercial licence then it removes the other option to set up a business selling these pre-built. Not everyone wants to build a printer.
Re: OpenPrinter
#194Earlier 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.
At the 2400 DPI that an HP printer can handle, the printer needs to place the head at 1/100 mm precision three times for every single dot on the page, and not smear them, despite not knowing what thickness or weight or finish the paper has. That is not trivial.
2400 dpi is not the bar for entry, though. Even 240 would qualify as a printer, albeit not a good one (SOTA in 1995 maybe).
Re: OpenPrinter
#195Earlier 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.
There was no reason to sell a dot matrix printer that wasn't compatible with tractor feed. Especially when some of the biggest uses of those printers required that stock. Doesn't mean they required tractor feed paper to operate.
A Matrix printer is essentially a typewriter with extra steps and typewriters had been eating any paper for .. a century before?
Re: OpenPrinter
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the technology side, I'm somewhat hopeful because it looks like they're using off-the-shelf HP ink cartridges for this. HP cartridges embed the printhead into the cartridge itself, and that printhead is arguably the most complicated part of the entire device. Outsource the printhead, and you're just designing a plotter with a PCL interface. I agree that the bigger challenge is going to be patents. It also wouldn't…
Maybe they should have purchased a design from Canon or someone that isn't really in this market anymore. It seems like not only are they locked into a specific older technology generation (which could be ok idk) but they also risk HP just discontinuing that cartridge. It seems like the printers for this cartridge were released around late 2017 so they could deprecate earlier than they normally do. Seems like they pr…
Canon is still in the market, they just supply parts and license IP to the printer manufacturers like HP. They make some high value stuff to sell to the OEMs but I don’t think they can make a whole print head anymore.
Re: OpenPrinter
#197Interesting 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…
Looks like this printer uses HP 85 ink cartridges, so the hardest bits of the engineering are being bought in from HP.
The rest of a printer aren't too hard to design and make, especially if you don't have super tight budget constraints.
Re: OpenPrinter
#198> With Openprinter, you are free to choose between standard sheets or a roll of versatile paper. A few other comments have concentrated on the printer head and ink cartridge, but the roll vs sheets interests me. Manipulating sheets of paper is actually quite a difficult problem to solve - and there is only a demonstration of paper placement. Loading page after page is actually really not easy at all. There is no exam…
Pi Zero seems overkill to me for a printer.
It costs $20 and comes with wifi and bluetooth. Seems like a valid choice to me.
Re: OpenPrinter
#199Earlier 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.
I suspect it's because the protocol for driving those cartridges is known and others have used them: https://spritesmods.com/?art=magicbrush https://spritesmods.com/?art=inker
Make sense. But at the same time sounds like another way to support the biggest predator in that space, no?
Re: OpenPrinter
#200And then government will declare this printer illegal because of no yellow dots.
Good thing they're not selling a printer then, they're selling a parts kit that you have to flash an open source controller firmware to and assemble yourself. Or you may just source them in any way you want. You can't really "outlaw" open source, we had this whole song and dance with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...