8 ms·

Refilling an ink jet cartridge with highlighter ink

122 points by luu 7y ago

mdip 7y ago
I had wondered how this individual was going to make Inkjet printer ink out of highlighter pens. I mean, considering the ink is priced somewhere around the same rate as liquid gold, I figured it was either going to end up being "way too easy" or we'd find out there was some important reason ink was so expensive. Neither was the result -- that's a Dot Matrix printer. I'd imagine if I'd have turned the volume on, you'd hear the obnoxious sound they make when printing. Still very cool, though.
- userbinator 7y ago
  That's actually a very early (monochrome) inkjet, and this is the cartridge for it --- appears to be based on the first HP design: http://starcommtest.printerinkwarehouse.com/printer/Diconix+150/22236/ http://starcommtest.printerinkwarehouse.com/printer/Diconix+... This might be the printer model, or a related one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-sL5UtqHCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-sL5UtqHCA Edit: Found something else she did with that printer, and confirms that it's the model above: https://hackaday.com/2020/01/09/vintage-mini-inkjet-prints-on-demand-ascii-art/ https://hackaday.com/2020/01/09/vintage-mini-inkjet-prints-o...
- detaro 7y ago
  I always am impressed how people clearly can tell someone got the difference between a dot matrix printer and an inkjet wrong despite working with it for months, just from seeing a short silent video snippet. BTW: https://twitter.com/MLE_Online/status/1243551232087584770 https://twitter.com/MLE_Online/status/1243551232087584770
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - userbinator 7y ago
    To be fair, I think this may be the first time a lot of people, even HN users, have seen a tractor-feed inkjet.
    - detaro 7y ago
      And if the submission was a question "what kind of printer is this", misidentifying it would be a completely harmless mistake. Assuming that the person owning it, clearly labeling it an inkjet, refilling its ink tank (did dot matrix printers ever have that?) must be the one wrong about it, less so.
- catblast 7y ago
  > Neither was the result -- that's a Dot Matrix printer. You’re mistaken.
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  Since nobody else has explained why so far, the smoking gun that makes it clear it's not a dot matrix printer is that dot matrix printers put ink onto paper using pins to strike a ribbon. They work on the same principle as typewriters did, which also used a ribbon. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter_ribbon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter_ribbon) The reason they're called "dot matrix" was to distinguish them from another contemporary type of printer that had type (letterforms) built directly into a ball or wheel, so that instead of an array of pins, a raised metal piece in the shape of (say) an "A" would strike the ribbon. ("Daisy wheel" printers were of this type.) These had nicer-looking, non-pixellated type, but they were slow and couldn't do any graphics. So if this really were a dot-matrix printer, she would have been putting highlighter ink onto a ribbon, but she was putting ink into a reservoir.
userbinator 7y ago
Inkjet printers can use a variety of inks, one notable application is the special third-party inks used for thermal transfers on clothing and such: https://www.inksupply.com/heat_transfer_ink.cfm https://www.inksupply.com/heat_transfer_ink.cfm The printer shown here is based on the original HP Bubblejet thermal technology, and thermal printheads are less flexible with the types of inks they can use; hence why Epsons (piezoelectric head) tend to be preferred by those using alternative inks.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pugworthy 7y ago
  I work with a very small group at HP that uses inkjet technology to dispense fluids for work in life sciences. Basically, inkjet TIJ technology lets you dispense very precise amounts of material with very precise timing. Normally that's just ink, but you can do it with quite a few other things. In our case, what we do is dispense liquids that normally would be done with a micropipette. We can mix up to 8 different materials in different combinations as part of various life sciences experiments.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    Guessing you're in the group that makes these? https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-printing-systems/products.html https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-prin... There's no pricing on that page. :( Any idea what kind of price (even range) they're in?
    - pugworthy 7y ago
      These here -> https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-printing-systems/d300.html https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-prin... I'm not 100% sure of the price but ... well we don't sell them at Best Buy :) The whole SPS group (Specialty Print Systems) focuses on using the inkjet technology for things HP may wish to not sell or market to directly. Like barcode printers, etc. Definitely reach out via the contact info at the bottom if you're interested.
obblekk 7y ago
Maybe this quarantine actually leads to enough random exploration in people’s free time, that we see an explosion of creative new startups afterwards. “Creative creation” as the libertarian economists might say.
- carlinmack 7y ago
  If we gave people UBI we could have this "creative creation" happening all the time
  - minikites 7y ago
    Or even a less radical step: guaranteeing healthcare for all citizens so it's not tied to employment at a large company.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      Agreed. As long as the country is not capable of pulling that off, any discussion of UBI is a waste of time.
    - cabaalis 7y ago
      Do this such that I who have the resources can also pay for electives if I want to and we can talk. Put my healthcare decisions in the hands of a government body and its a non-starter.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        That’s how it works in most countries. People with more money can buy better treatment.
      - aidenn0 7y ago
        I actually think that government healthcare might be a good opportunity to reduce regulation of private healthcare: if the government is paying for it, they dictate the terms, but for a private transaction, much less oversight would be needed. Of course having this happen would require compromise which appears to be completely absent from our current legislative process...
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Wait, so why was the print out only visible under a black light?
- barrkel 7y ago
  It's probably very faintly visible in ordinary light, but what makes fluorescent ink interesting is that it fluoresces, i.e. it reflects UV light in the visible spectrum, which makes it seem brighter than normal pigments. So the blacklight makes it much more visible.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Ah! So in the words, the printer is placing a thinner (ie, too thin) layer of ink on the paper than a human with a highlighter would, right?
    - StevenWaterman 7y ago
      Yep, printer ink has much more pigment in it because a few ml of ink has to cover hundreds of pages
    - derefr 7y ago
      That, or the brightener particles are making it through the nozzle, but the nozzle diameter is too fine for the highlighter pigment particles themselves.
- dwnvoted2hell 7y ago
  It's a security feature of using florescent yellow ink.
magduf 7y ago
Interesting, but it's a lot easier to just toss out the inkjet and buy an inexpensive laser printer. You can even buy a small-office color laser printer for $200-300 these days. And 3rd-party toner cartridges for these printers are ubiquitous and cheap and work fine. Why does anyone use inkjets any more? The entire industry is just a big scam.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Cerium 7y ago
  You can get good printers used too. My last printer served me for about 10 years. I don't print a lot, so I only did a couple thousand prints during that time. Not enough enough to finish off the cartridge that was in it when I bought the printer. I paid $50.
- eythian 7y ago
  I don't know if you can get highlighter toner for a laser printer.
  - ricohboy 7y ago
    Very high end devices (the size of a printing press) will sometimes have spot color capabilities, for finishes like neon colors or clear coating
- ricohboy 7y ago
  Inkjet has far superior color reproduction to laser. Even the highest end production color laser copiers can't do the same level of color matching that inkjet can As for home/office use, yes inkjets are a huge scam
- teraflop 7y ago
  > Interesting, but it's a lot easier to just toss out the inkjet and buy an inexpensive laser printer. Ah yes, the true hacker ethos.
jcl 7y ago
Reminds me of the barely visible yellow tracking dots that some color inkjets produce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
paulmd 7y ago
Actually squeezing it from a highlighter is messy and unnecessary. You can buy bottled highlighter ink for fountain pens pretty cheaply. (there are special super-broad pen nibs for highlighting work. To use bulk ink, you have a "converter" cartridge with a piston or squeeze-bottle that allows you to suck ink out of the bottle and into the pen) Since you specifically seem to be after fluorescent, here's somewhere to get started: https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink?filters%5Bcustom_fields.fluorescent%5D%5B0%5D=Yes https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink?filters%5... Here's an "invisible ink": https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/noodlers-blue-ghost-4-5oz-bottled-ink?variant=11884744540203 https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/... Or a yellow highlighter ink: https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/noodlers-firefly-4-5oz-bottled-ink?variant=11884744278059 https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/... Pink: https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/noodlers-hellfire-3oz-bottled-ink?variant=11884742180907 https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/... I am not 100% sure that the viscosity will exactly match what printer ink is, but if it's too thick you could cut it with isopropyl alcohol or similar. edit: on further reflection if your goal is something that is visible outside of a blacklight, the darker colors might have more pigment and thus be more visible, although still probably quite light.
- pugworthy 7y ago
  Emily's a hacker who does a lot for fun and amusement. I get the sense that doing this in an efficient and effective way was not the end goal.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Yea, she has another video where she uses an Arduino to run an old printer, when it would have been way simpler to get a USB to parallel port adapter.
  - pugworthy 7y ago
    Seriously, I've followed her for a while on Twitter, and she does a lot of really fun crazy stuff. I've really enjoyed having a twitter feed centered around positive, fun feeds.

122 points by luu 7y ago

mdip 7y ago

I had wondered how this individual was going to make Inkjet printer ink out of highlighter pens. I mean, considering the ink is priced somewhere around the same rate as liquid gold, I figured it was either going to end up being "way too easy" or we'd find out there was some important reason ink was so expensive. Neither was the result -- that's a Dot Matrix printer. I'd imagine if I'd have turned the volume on, you'd hear the obnoxious sound they make when printing. Still very cool, though.

userbinator 7y ago
That's actually a very early (monochrome) inkjet, and this is the cartridge for it --- appears to be based on the first HP design: http://starcommtest.printerinkwarehouse.com/printer/Diconix+150/22236/ http://starcommtest.printerinkwarehouse.com/printer/Diconix+... This might be the printer model, or a related one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-sL5UtqHCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-sL5UtqHCA Edit: Found something else she did with that printer, and confirms that it's the model above: https://hackaday.com/2020/01/09/vintage-mini-inkjet-prints-on-demand-ascii-art/ https://hackaday.com/2020/01/09/vintage-mini-inkjet-prints-o...
detaro 7y ago
I always am impressed how people clearly can tell someone got the difference between a dot matrix printer and an inkjet wrong despite working with it for months, just from seeing a short silent video snippet. BTW: https://twitter.com/MLE_Online/status/1243551232087584770 https://twitter.com/MLE_Online/status/1243551232087584770
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- userbinator 7y ago
  To be fair, I think this may be the first time a lot of people, even HN users, have seen a tractor-feed inkjet.
  - detaro 7y ago
    And if the submission was a question "what kind of printer is this", misidentifying it would be a completely harmless mistake. Assuming that the person owning it, clearly labeling it an inkjet, refilling its ink tank (did dot matrix printers ever have that?) must be the one wrong about it, less so.
catblast 7y ago
> Neither was the result -- that's a Dot Matrix printer. You’re mistaken.
adrianmonk 7y ago
Since nobody else has explained why so far, the smoking gun that makes it clear it's not a dot matrix printer is that dot matrix printers put ink onto paper using pins to strike a ribbon. They work on the same principle as typewriters did, which also used a ribbon. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter_ribbon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter_ribbon) The reason they're called "dot matrix" was to distinguish them from another contemporary type of printer that had type (letterforms) built directly into a ball or wheel, so that instead of an array of pins, a raised metal piece in the shape of (say) an "A" would strike the ribbon. ("Daisy wheel" printers were of this type.) These had nicer-looking, non-pixellated type, but they were slow and couldn't do any graphics. So if this really were a dot-matrix printer, she would have been putting highlighter ink onto a ribbon, but she was putting ink into a reservoir.

userbinator 7y ago

Inkjet printers can use a variety of inks, one notable application is the special third-party inks used for thermal transfers on clothing and such: https://www.inksupply.com/heat_transfer_ink.cfm https://www.inksupply.com/heat_transfer_ink.cfm The printer shown here is based on the original HP Bubblejet thermal technology, and thermal printheads are less flexible with the types of inks they can use; hence why Epsons (piezoelectric head) tend to be preferred by those using alternative inks.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pugworthy 7y ago
I work with a very small group at HP that uses inkjet technology to dispense fluids for work in life sciences. Basically, inkjet TIJ technology lets you dispense very precise amounts of material with very precise timing. Normally that's just ink, but you can do it with quite a few other things. In our case, what we do is dispense liquids that normally would be done with a micropipette. We can mix up to 8 different materials in different combinations as part of various life sciences experiments.
- justinclift 7y ago
  Guessing you're in the group that makes these? https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-printing-systems/products.html https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-prin... There's no pricing on that page. :( Any idea what kind of price (even range) they're in?
  - pugworthy 7y ago
    These here -> https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-printing-systems/d300.html https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-prin... I'm not 100% sure of the price but ... well we don't sell them at Best Buy :) The whole SPS group (Specialty Print Systems) focuses on using the inkjet technology for things HP may wish to not sell or market to directly. Like barcode printers, etc. Definitely reach out via the contact info at the bottom if you're interested.

obblekk 7y ago

Maybe this quarantine actually leads to enough random exploration in people’s free time, that we see an explosion of creative new startups afterwards. “Creative creation” as the libertarian economists might say.

carlinmack 7y ago
If we gave people UBI we could have this "creative creation" happening all the time
- minikites 7y ago
  Or even a less radical step: guaranteeing healthcare for all citizens so it's not tied to employment at a large company.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    Agreed. As long as the country is not capable of pulling that off, any discussion of UBI is a waste of time.
  - cabaalis 7y ago
    Do this such that I who have the resources can also pay for electives if I want to and we can talk. Put my healthcare decisions in the hands of a government body and its a non-starter.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      That’s how it works in most countries. People with more money can buy better treatment.
    - aidenn0 7y ago
      I actually think that government healthcare might be a good opportunity to reduce regulation of private healthcare: if the government is paying for it, they dictate the terms, but for a private transaction, much less oversight would be needed. Of course having this happen would require compromise which appears to be completely absent from our current legislative process...

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

Wait, so why was the print out only visible under a black light?

barrkel 7y ago
It's probably very faintly visible in ordinary light, but what makes fluorescent ink interesting is that it fluoresces, i.e. it reflects UV light in the visible spectrum, which makes it seem brighter than normal pigments. So the blacklight makes it much more visible.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Ah! So in the words, the printer is placing a thinner (ie, too thin) layer of ink on the paper than a human with a highlighter would, right?
  - StevenWaterman 7y ago
    Yep, printer ink has much more pigment in it because a few ml of ink has to cover hundreds of pages
  - derefr 7y ago
    That, or the brightener particles are making it through the nozzle, but the nozzle diameter is too fine for the highlighter pigment particles themselves.
dwnvoted2hell 7y ago
It's a security feature of using florescent yellow ink.

magduf 7y ago

Interesting, but it's a lot easier to just toss out the inkjet and buy an inexpensive laser printer. You can even buy a small-office color laser printer for $200-300 these days. And 3rd-party toner cartridges for these printers are ubiquitous and cheap and work fine. Why does anyone use inkjets any more? The entire industry is just a big scam.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Cerium 7y ago
You can get good printers used too. My last printer served me for about 10 years. I don't print a lot, so I only did a couple thousand prints during that time. Not enough enough to finish off the cartridge that was in it when I bought the printer. I paid $50.
eythian 7y ago
I don't know if you can get highlighter toner for a laser printer.
- ricohboy 7y ago
  Very high end devices (the size of a printing press) will sometimes have spot color capabilities, for finishes like neon colors or clear coating
ricohboy 7y ago
Inkjet has far superior color reproduction to laser. Even the highest end production color laser copiers can't do the same level of color matching that inkjet can As for home/office use, yes inkjets are a huge scam
teraflop 7y ago
> Interesting, but it's a lot easier to just toss out the inkjet and buy an inexpensive laser printer. Ah yes, the true hacker ethos.

jcl 7y ago

Reminds me of the barely visible yellow tracking dots that some color inkjets produce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code

paulmd 7y ago

Actually squeezing it from a highlighter is messy and unnecessary. You can buy bottled highlighter ink for fountain pens pretty cheaply. (there are special super-broad pen nibs for highlighting work. To use bulk ink, you have a "converter" cartridge with a piston or squeeze-bottle that allows you to suck ink out of the bottle and into the pen) Since you specifically seem to be after fluorescent, here's somewhere to get started: https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink?filters%5Bcustom_fields.fluorescent%5D%5B0%5D=Yes https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink?filters%5... Here's an "invisible ink": https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/noodlers-blue-ghost-4-5oz-bottled-ink?variant=11884744540203 https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/... Or a yellow highlighter ink: https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/noodlers-firefly-4-5oz-bottled-ink?variant=11884744278059 https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/... Pink: https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/noodlers-hellfire-3oz-bottled-ink?variant=11884742180907 https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/... I am not 100% sure that the viscosity will exactly match what printer ink is, but if it's too thick you could cut it with isopropyl alcohol or similar. edit: on further reflection if your goal is something that is visible outside of a blacklight, the darker colors might have more pigment and thus be more visible, although still probably quite light.

pugworthy 7y ago
Emily's a hacker who does a lot for fun and amusement. I get the sense that doing this in an efficient and effective way was not the end goal.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Yea, she has another video where she uses an Arduino to run an old printer, when it would have been way simpler to get a USB to parallel port adapter.
- pugworthy 7y ago
  Seriously, I've followed her for a while on Twitter, and she does a lot of really fun crazy stuff. I've really enjoyed having a twitter feed centered around positive, fun feeds.