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OpenPrinter

opentools.studio

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Re: OpenPrinter

#271

Post by Joel_Mckay »

f1shy wrote: post #230
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are still quality laser printers on the market without extortion and surveillance built-in" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots Every manufacturer volunteered to rob their own customers of anonymity. Even at the OS and application level (Adobe) people are being tagged with robust watermarks. In general, still no one cares. =3

It only works if yellow cartridge is installed. And is anonymous, because it only identifies the serial nr., make and model of the printer.

The unique properties of every imaging/printing system are usually robust in identifying specific devices. Not really anonymous if eventually registered, compared, or metadata indexed.

It is also common for people to create urban legends rather than discuss how to actually fix legal policy failures. As previously stated, consumers implicitly gave permission though sustained inaction on industry volunteering to help track customers.

An OSS printer would be cool from a standards/driver perspective, but microfluidics are a nontrivial technology. Bloomberg also paid lobbyists >$23m to try to mandate "AI" R.A.T. installation (company associated with Palantir) on 3D printers to attempt convincing criminals to care about laws again.

It is unclear if such action is consistent with constitutional legal precedents, but it is certainly hilarious to see kids figure out the mess a prior generation creates. Best of luck, =3

Re: OpenPrinter

#272

Post by beAbU »

ACCount37 wrote: post #173
HelloUsername wrote: post #2

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…

The single hardest part is the print head. If you can reuse an existing one, and you can, then you're most of the way there. The paper path itself is mechanically involved, but not to an impossible degree - it's hard to make it work, but it's not MEMS magic, it's manufacturable in the same way advanced 3D printers are manufacturable.

Yet it's the paper handler that constantly jams and the printhead is fine after alignment.

Re: OpenPrinter

#273

Post by deinonychus »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #56
slashdave wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just bought a Brother ink tank printer (they have a whole line). Let's see how long it lasts.

Thirteen models that all look nearly identical and a website that doesn't even remotely help you distinguish between them. I see the same people have been in charge of product design and marketing at Brother for the last twenty years...

and the product browsing page crashes when i apply more than 2 filters or attempt to sort by price. half of the visible products are out of stock or no longer manufactured. really enjoyable experience.

Re: OpenPrinter

#274

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jboy55 wrote: post #34
drum55 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why this is just using off the shelf cartridges with commercial heads.

Which is why its more surprising this was first announced last year and there's no Proof of Concept demo yet? But really, I've given up on ink jet printers, and have gone the cheap B&W laser route for anything I need to print at home (In the past year, 2 times, a backup ticket and some paperwork that needed a real signature sent back). But when I had them, the thing that went bad 99.999% of the time was the cartridge…

Re PoC, they have a YouTube video showing black and white printing and paper cutting on the Crowd Supply page, https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer/updates/....

Re: OpenPrinter

#275

Post by ssl-3 »

saturn8601 wrote: post #44
tjohns wrote: post #14

Earlier 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…

I did some research on weird inkjet printers a few years ago. We wanted to do stuff like print white[1] graphics continuously onto rolls of black heat shrink tubing.

One thing I discovered was that there's whole Chinese industries supplying this stuff in the forms of industrial printers and the application-specific cartridges they consume. And they all had one thing in common: They were based around the functionality of an HP printer cartridge. That was the universal interface.

This leads me to believe that a print cartridge format can be supported by the marketplace for a very long time whether HP likes it or not.

[1]: Printing with white is neat. It sounds impossible and there are those who say it can't happen, but it exists. It's just problematic. The head gets perma-clogged with solids within minutes of disuse in open air. So starting a print job is a race: Get everything set up, uncap the cartridge at the last moment, and then put that cap back on ASAP when the job is over.

Re: OpenPrinter

#276

Post by pbhjpbhj »

londons_explore wrote: post #197
HelloUsername wrote: post #2

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…

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.

Makes sense, presumably if the project is well enough supported then they can move on to cartridge/head production, or modify to use whatever heads are available.

Out of ignorance, I wonder how IPR will work with interoperability rights. Patent rights seem like they might not be exhausted when you buy a spare part to use in third-party device, vs when you buy a spare part for an OEM device.

I'm guessing all the tech here has aged out of patent protection though?

Re: OpenPrinter

#277

Post by pbhjpbhj »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #222
HelloUsername wrote: post #2

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…

interesting that on the front page at this time is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757900 "The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming", which, it seems that it may be, but not for inkjet printers?

Is this not an example - they mention 3D printing of parts to customise for personal requirements?

I like the wall mounted example with the output paper holder below. Neat.

Re: OpenPrinter

#278

Post by tracker1 »

Cool, unless you sometimes go weeks or a couple months without printing and everything gums up... I've never seen an ink printer that doesn't. I tend to favor laser, only because I can go months without printing and then fire off a print job, and it comes out without issue.

The continuous feed is nice though... I can see this used for banners like in the old sheet fed dot-matrix days... Print Shop Pro FTW!

Re: OpenPrinter

#279

Post by bryanrasmussen »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #277
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting that on the front page at this time is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757900 "The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming", which, it seems that it may be, but not for inkjet printers?

Is this not an example - they mention 3D printing of parts to customise for personal requirements? I like the wall mounted example with the output paper holder below. Neat.

yes but the parent commenter asserts that an open source inkjet will never happen which I take to mean that a customized inkjet is not happening either.

Re: OpenPrinter

#280

Post by geonineties »

a96 wrote: post #195
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.

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?

Are you thinking of Daisy wheel? Dot matrix uses a set of pins arranged in a matrix that they ram forward to press the ribbon against the paper. Daisy wheel uses a raised character glyph and slams it forward into the ribbon. Every typewriter I've used has full glyphs.
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