If the ink is refillable due to lack of DRM, why not just buy a commercial printer that supports those cartridges?
OpenPrinter
251–260 of 299 posts
Re: OpenPrinter
#252Probably a stupid question: But where do you get (refillable) ink for this printer from?
Re: OpenPrinter
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I agree that the bigger challenge is going to be patents. Surely most/all of the patents around the actual inkjet printing function have expired though, right? I had inkjet printers in the mid 00s and if anything I feel like your average inkjet is worse these days.
In medicine, it's a regular trick to find some new patentable formulation or tweak to switch to manufacturing shortly before the original patents expire, so that you continue to have a patent-protected product. It would not surprise me if something similar was happening here: HP's current cartridges have at least one piece that is under active patent protection and they don't manufacture any designs that have no pate…
Mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but the print heads are a very specialized silicon chip with internal microfluidic passages, microscopic heaters, etc. Who else would even make them? The kind of thing you would need millions of dollars to reverse engineer and replicate just to enter the lucrative market of... making inkjet cartridges.
I would be shocked to discover that there are counterfeit print heads out there the same way there are counterfeit STM32 microcontrollers.
Unless the patents have something to do with the shape of the cartridge or they somehow have a patent on "technique to fill printer cartridge with ink" which would not be so surprising.
Re: OpenPrinter
#254> 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…
> specifics of the Pi variant (i.e. RAM) are not mentioned I agree with the rest but Pi Zero W is a specific machine with 512 MB RAM: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w/ It's also the one everyone can buy online for $19, not Pi Zero 2 W (always out of stock)
> I agree with the rest but Pi Zero W is a specific machine with 512 MB RAM:
I thought they came in different variants - my meat-based LLM must have hallucinated it.
> It's also the one everyone can buy online for $19, not Pi Zero 2 W (always out of stock)
I get the impression that they don't actively manufacture Pi Zero W anymore and it's all old stock. Rapid for example say they have an availability of 761 (at time of writing) [1], but are those all within Rapid's control, or what is reported at Raspberry Pi's remaining stock? If you sell 1k printer units, can you put a Pi Zero W in all of them?
Compute modules are probably a bit more reliable and there is some capability with other modules, specifically the DDR2 form factor ones [2] (which is my favorite form factor). For example, ClockWork sold their own compatible compute modules [3].
[1] https://www.rapidonline.com/raspberry-pi-sc0020-zero-w-singl...
[2] https://www.rapidonline.com/raspberry-pi-compute-module-cm3-...
Re: OpenPrinter
#255Earlier 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.
Dot matrix can handle regular A4 paper since the late nineties. 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.
> Dot matrix can handle regular A4 paper since the late nineties.
Did you mean the late 80s'? Growing up we had a Panasonic dot matrix printer from the mid to late 80s that had no trouble with A4 paper.
Re: OpenPrinter
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think a single one ever required any serious repairs beyond replacing consumables I think your experience has been an outlier. I've had several printers from different brands also, and have had some that last a long time, and still print with decent quality even with off-brand ink/toner. However, quite a lot have also failed due to bad capacitors, bad power modules, or the printer or it's firmware just refu…
I owned a Brother inkjet for some time. I'd print maybe a few times a year. But it seemed like every time I needed to print, the printer was out of ink. Granted I used an ink service (ie not official brother ink) but still where the heck was the ink going? I've since switched to a Brother LaserJet and I'm still on the starter toner after a couple of years.
I realized just a couple weeks ago that I've had my Brother laser printer for 10 years, and I've only changed the toner once -- so long ago that I don't remember when that was.
Re: OpenPrinter
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've reevaluated. Still not worth it. My Brother is hitting 10 years now, and I'm trying to think of many scenarios where I really needed to print colour at home.
I don't think this was a mono vs color argument but rather ink color vs laser color.
Gggp post said they were just sticking with b+w laser, and gp post suggested a colour laser.
Re: OpenPrinter
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
In all honesty for years I had one in my small home office, and every time I printed something I could smell it in the room afterwards for an hour, sometimes even getting headaches from this. Switched to inkjet a few years ago and will never look back.
What was the printer? I haven't experienced the odor of ozone when printing at home since my HP Laserjet 4 died from water damage 18 years ago. My current Brother laser printer (an MFC-2750DW, IIRC) is so non-stinky that I haven't thought about for a very long time.
Samsung ML-1630. I had it for a really long time. I had opened it up to solder the page counter to ground so it always thought it was on page 0, instead of demanding to replacement. And I had manually refilled the toner many times into the toner cart. But I don’t think the smell is because of that, it’s the same laser printer / photocopier smell you smell in all print shops. I believe it is small aerosolized toner particles, makes me wonder if long term print shop workers have a higher cancer rate.
Re: OpenPrinter
#259Laser printers are so much more economical. I use Brother black and white laser printer with after market toner cartridges from eBay . Print around 200 pages a day. Around 5000 pages for 37 AUD ie around 25 USD. The paper costs more per page than the toner. Just make sure you stay away from HP branded printers...
Or get a good old LaserJet 4050 used somewhere.
Indestructible workhorse.
Re: OpenPrinter
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Printheads are nanotechnology with extreme precision requirements. The rest of the printer is a few well-timed stepper motors, simple in comparison. HP cartridges including the printheads will take a lot of complexity away from the open design. In theory you could probably modify one of these by grabbing an HP cartridge and slapping an ink tank on top with the right sponge for transferring the ink over. Selling parts…
>HP cartridges including the printheads will take a lot of complexity away from the open design. Yes, but it also means it won't be cheaper or more reliable than a regular printer. The print head is what fails most often and you'll still have to buy a new one.
Aftermarket ink cartridges that are HP compatible are quite cheap compared to brand name