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OpenPrinter

OpenPrinter

bouh

Comments (113)

  • HelloUsername
    Interesting comment from last time this was posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48093670Inkjet 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 a pre-crowdfund landing page without a demonstrating a working prototype. I would like to be wrong, but I expect you to be waiting a long time. An inkjet printer is not a collection of off the shelf parts. It is a machine that operates at the edge of chemistry, fluid dynamics, and electro-mechanical design...you have to place tiny tiny drops of liquid ink on commodity wood pulp with precision under arbitrary environmental conditions, get that ink to dry on the wood pulp, but not in tank or nozzel, while producing acceptable color, durability, and ease of use. Also lawyers...there are patents.
  • zerobees
    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, inkjet, laser. I don't think a single one ever required any serious repairs beyond replacing consumables, clearing paper jams, and pulling out lint. I upgraded as the technology improved. My first laser printer needed about 4x as much desk space as the current one.
  • VorpalWay
    This is interesting, but it seems to be a crowdfunding campaign only. I wish them the best of luck (the cause is worthy for sure), but buyer beware at this point.(I myself don't 2D print enough that an ink based printer makes sense for me. Ink tends to dry, so for me a laser printer that can sit for months at a time makes more sense. I use the scanner as well as my 3D printer far more often.)I wonder how they will handle the nonsense around yellow tracking dots[1] etc. Hopefully that doesn't become a problem.[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
  • ssddanbrown
    > Open Printer is distributed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.So not open source.
  • williadc
    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 reliability?
  • esskay
    Unless I'm missing something using this in a commercial application would be a license violation:> Open Printer is distributed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.> This means that everyone is free to use, share, and modify the project, provided they credit the original author, share derivatives under the same license, and do not use it for commercial purposes.It's also not opensource yet, there's a vague mention of "when its ready" it'll be released.
  • dinkleberg
    I really love the idea of a paper roll rather than individual sheets. Being able to print out to the size you want rather than only in pre-set sizes is quite cool.
  • exmadscientist
    I talked a bit about this years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37007815TL;DR: I'm surprised this isn't a laser printer, as those are actually quite a bit easier to design and manufacture, especially if you can use a cheap, older, commonly available, remanufacturable toner cartridge.
  • logdahl
    Would be interested in others take on this. Personally, I wonder:- By rolling the paper, will it really stay flat after printing? - How easy / cheap will sourcing ink be?
  • 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.
  • Muromec
    Image loading is too fancy and went on a lunch break I think.
  • idorosen
    I want to buy one of these just to support projects like it.
  • newman314
    Seems interesting but I would like a laser version of this. Not ever going back to inkjet.
  • ftchd
    For some reason the 8 image grid only loads the first image, maybe there's no images to load?
  • golem14
    I was hoping to see a printer that say a prepper could build from scratch. This design 100% depends on commercial print cartridges containing the actual print-head. Once that clogs, you need to get another one, good luck getting one once production has stopped.Also, if you wanted to avoid yellow dots, not sure if this is built into the cartridge or the firmware of the rest of the printer.Now, I understand that would be hard to pull off. Maybe one could build a deskjet500 equivalent one.Laser printers are quite complex as well, you need too many non-easy to build from scratch parts.Maybe a dot matrix printer is possible.I know for sure you can retrofit older electric typewriters, and those are pretty repairable.
  • rubatuga
    Isn't the paper feed the hardest part - the part that always gets jammed? I swear a paper roll is cheating.
  • s0a
    just in time. this will certainly juice development of the equally important open source fax machine.
  • TeaVMFan
    Title Typo? Reparaible to Repairable?
  • another-account
    LASER
  • Natfan
    how has no on mentioned the typo in the titles/Reparaible/Repairable
  • prrrrrint
    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.
  • tomkarho
    Richard they did it. You can rest now.
  • einpoklum
    This is just the thing I needed 30 years ago :-(To be less facetious though, this seems like a nice project (*), but I print so much less these days than in the past. I printed a lot of color stuff when I was in school; but these days I just settle for black/halftoning from a laser printer, for when I actually need something printed, and color on screen only.---(*) - except perhaps for the NC restriction in the license.
  • ChrisArchitect
    Please "repair" the title, maybe include OpenPrinter to start with, or solely.Some previous discussion on the crowdfunding:Inkjet printer with DRM-free ink will be launched via a crowdfunding campaign (2025)https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45423404
  • ktallett
    It's such a good idea as a project and by the looks of things well executed. I also feel the style of the printer and the fact it can be a roll of paper will lead to interesting project ideas.
  • protocolture
    How do they get a satan inside it, i thought demons were proprietary.
  • getcrunk
    I mean it’s about time a company makes a repairable and pro consumer printer. My god
  • jzer0cool
    Can we expect photos to be looking nice?
  • mrsssnake
    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 restriced.
  • focusgroup0
    [dead]