In the 3D printing world, there are plenty of open source choices, allowing manufacturers to drive down costs. On the other hand, it seems 2d printing is stuck with legacy companies with completely closed drivers and hardware (you have to buy cartridges from the original manufacturer).
Apart from the nozzle why is it hard to manufacture and/or design?
Some of the documents that we previously received through FOIA suggested that all major manufacturers of color laser printers entered a secret agreement with governments to ensure that the output of those printers is forensically traceable.
But as others have mentioned, commercial printers are really cheap, especially for how complicated they are to replicate so there's not much motivation to make them.
You'd never run out of toner at least.
Edit, answered at least one question: yes engravers do 500 dpi routinely. Here's one: https://www.troteclaser.com/en-us/knowledge/tips-for-laser-u...
The author describes their work to make a very simple DIY inkjet printer for under $1000. While they are using a nozzle that they purchased, you can make a similar one yourself (check out the book "Microdrop generation" by Eric Lee).
All-in-all it's fairly complicated just to start printing droplets, to say nothing of scaling beyond a single nozzle or precisely moving the printhead.
cough I'll just leave this here. Want some coffee, two sugars, right?
Point being, there are quite a few alternative use cases that commodity printers have going on under the covers that no one tends to talk about all that much. There's forensic watermarking for one but also supposedly certain features hard-coded in where if it detects it in an input, it intentionally leaves it out as an anti-counterfeiting measure. The article for that one was floating around on HN a while ago. I'll see if I can dredge it up.
Making copies is one of those things where there are several opportunities for power consolidation to be had if you look hard enough.
It's like the whole issue with 3d printing of guns. No one in an authoritative position necessarily wants everyone to have the capability to generate at will perfect duplication of information due to the consequences that spells for several entrenched, high relative value use cases.
Because you can print 3D printer with 3D printer. You can make paper templates with paper template.
[1] How he started the worldwide 3D printing revolution / Adrian Bowyer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV0Tjwq7Uc0
The ink cartridges are good money, but it’s not where the money is at.
[0] https://www.rfdtv.com/story/42630937/global-ink-cartridges-m...
IBM must have had this use in mind because they actually made a variation of the Selectric design that could be used as a serial terminal. We have one in storage at work but I think the mechanism is seized. Wikipedia has a surprisingly long section about modifying the Selectric to work as a computer terminal[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter#Use_a...
Daisy wheel printers were slow, loud, and had huge limits (no kerning, single typeface, no printing family photos), but the print quality was good. And if you are the kind of person who likes mechanical keyboard sounds, the sound of a daisy wheel printer is pretty cool.
* an anime character printed with a thermal receipt printer * a 4x6 card with an information graphic I rendered with CSS Grid * a shutterfly envelope to family in New England, etc.
most of the time I am starting with an image somebody else made, but there is a lot of judgement involved with fitting the image to paper and process -- it is a bridge between the world of digital images that I work and play in and the real world.
I go through printers the way rock stars go through guitars and what to do with the e-Waste is already part of the product.
I am amazed the the HP Officejet 6600 which just failed on me -- despite the expensive ink, the quality of the work it could do is astonishing.
It stopped picking up paper because something (like a little plastic gear) broke in the drive chain for the pick roller. To be fair all the rollers looked pretty worn -- the printer had been heavily used by a college professor. It's possible we could have fixed it but considering the cost of the next ink refill, I chose to get another printer.
If I were going to salvage the old printer I think I would go for the stepper motors, which would be great for robotics and other mechatronic projects.
---
I badly want to hack an inkjet printer to print white ink onto transparencies and then put it into a second printer to take a PNG with alpha like
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:793Nihilego.png
and make a sticker that could go in a window. Commercial kits to do this cost about as much as a good DSLR lens and they are a business expense to people who are making large quantities of swag.
It's a good market case for the "open source 2d printer" however. It's one thing to get white ink compatible with the printer, it's another thing to get the transfer function between "75% transparent" and a certain amount of ink into the printer's brain.
Printer paper came in long, laser-perforated sheets with tabs. You'd load in the start and one sheet pulls in the next.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_stationery
The crank you had to put into the front of the printer to get the steam-powered engine turning could jam in the transmission, though, and you had to watch the temperature of your coal-fired ink tank so it didn't over-boil. Those "electronic" printer guys thought they were so fancy.
GRBL Plotter Elegoo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYqx5wg4oLU
"A reverse-engineered typewriter hack to make it into a printer. Using a simple MOSFET circuit and an Arduino (actually, a Light Blue Bean+ arduino compatible board), I reverse-engineered my IBM Wheelwriter 6 typewriter to print out text and some rudimentary graphics. The GitHub repository is here, and I'll continue to update it with schematics, etc., when I get some time: https://github.com/tofergregg/IBM-Wheelwriter-Hack"
Same user has a similar hack for a 1960s Smith Corona Sterling Automatic 12: https://github.com/tofergregg/smith_corona_printer
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2016/11-...
Paper has a right-side-up, and your printing life improves drastically if you just look at the little arrow before putting the paper in the printer.
https://www.xerox.com/downloads/gbr/en/p/Paper_Guide.pdf
> As the front and back surfaces of the paper, as determined during the papermaking process, differ slightly, one side is preferred as the side to image first. The primary determinant of which side to print first is the paper’s curl characteristics.
> If you are using a quality paper intended for digital printing, the ream wrapper will be marked with an arrow that points to the preferred printing side. Print on this side when printing one side only; print this side first when printing on both sides of a sheet.
> Whether this side is to be loaded UP or DOWN in the paper tray has to be determined for each machine (and sometimes for each paper tray) by reading the system's operator guide. Once you've determined the correct orientation, marking each paper tray with a label indicating the correct loading direction helps avoid operator error and lost productivity.
> Determining Curl
> In the event a paper ream is not marked for correct print-side orientation, it may be necessary to determine the curl direction yourself. Do this by holding a 1/2-inch stack of paper by one of its short edges (refer to figure 4-2). Let the paper hang with the long edge parallel to your body. Either the lower edge or the two side edges will be curling slightly toward the center. Observe which way the edge(s) curl. This is the curl side. Load the paper into the tray such that the side opposite the direction of curl is imaged first.
> Note: If the ream had an arrow marking, it would point to the OPPOSITE side. Load into the paper tray in the appropriate direction
> Built-in Curl
> Xerox papers are manufactured with a small amount of “reverse curl,” so that they will be very close to flat after processing – this will facilitate any post-processing that needs to occur, such as binding, trimming or folding. Load according to the arrow direction for best results.
> Loading The Paper Tray
> Carefully unwrap the reams of paper to be loaded, taking care not to bend any of the sheets or otherwise damage the paper. Inspect the paper for any obvious signs of damage (bends, folds, crumpled or wavy edges, tight edges), or defects. Fan the paper as necessary to avoid sticking edges. Do not handle the paper any more than necessary.
> Load the reams into the paper tray one at a time, taking care to observe the correct orientation, as indicated by the ream wrapper arrow.
> When more than one ream is being loaded, it is important to make certain the reams are aligned atop one another. It is easy to wrinkle, bend, or otherwise alter the top sheet of a lower ream when placing another one on top of it. The interface between reams in the paper tray is a frequent source of jams. It is particularly important to avoid loading successive reams inconsistently (some arrow up, some arrow down).
> Observe the paper fill line marked on all paper trays and do not load paper above this line.
There's a bunch more there about correct storage.
