19 ms·

Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?

• jacquesm 6y ago
  Because a good 2D printer costs peanuts.
  • pangoraw 6y ago
    Yes but then you have to buy cartridges from the manufacturer who has the control to say there are empty when in fact they are not. It is a completely closed ecosystem. I believe customers deserve better alternatives.
    • nottorp 6y ago
      Just ask your local refill shop what printer to buy so you don't have to go through this. That's what I did when I last bought a printer.
    • izacus 6y ago
      There's a very lively market of refilled / aftermarket cartriges which lowers the incentive to fix these issues.
    • detaro 6y ago
      For many brands you can easily buy off-brand cartridges, and nowadays quite a few sell printers that work of ink tanks and don't even have cartridges.
  • marcus_holmes 6y ago
    As a relatively new owner of a 3D printer, cost has very little to do with it. I spent way more on upgrading and tinkering with my printer than the thing cost in the first place. If there was a 2D equivalent, I'd be interested in tinkering with that, too. And yes, that would probably mean spending 5x ot 10x more than a cheap commercial printer to get a printer than underperformed said cheap commercial printer. But it would be mine, and I would understand it, and be able to mess with it. And fix it if it broke. And use weird inks with it. And so on.
    • detaro 6y ago
      Would you do that tinkering if you could just buy a 3D printer cheaply that didn't need upgrading and worked perfectly? You can probably adapt a printhead from a printer to your 3D printer today if you want a crappy DIY 2D printer and go from there.
      • manyxcxi 6y ago
        I got into it specifically because you can get good printers cheap. There is a manufacturer that offers an open source based printer that was better than it had any reason to be for less than $300. My printer today looks nothing like the printer I started with, I’ve switched boards, recompiled my own firmware, the whole bit. I was confident in hacking on it for two reasons: 1) It was open source based 2) Replacement parts are inexpensive I originally started with a Makerbot 2X which was closed source and $2500 (8+ years ago). Mind you, I didn’t have one at home- we had a couple at work for prototyping. The slicing software was atrocious, the ability to fix it was hampered by what parts they sold, and the replacement parts were generally very expensive. My $250 printer was better in every objective measure out of the box than the MakerBot was after years of practice and tuning. This year my friend’s 2X died and a replacement motherboard was going to be almost as much as the cost of my printer new so he just gave it to me and bought a new printer. With my newfound confidence from my “cheap” printer, I gutted the 2X and installed an open source motherboard and completely rewired it. It all started with a printer good enough to be liked by the community and open enough to be modifiable.
        • sleepybrett 6y ago
          Nothing like a extruder that is not user serviceable and only prints PLA. When I was told that my office went through several of those extruders, I took some year end left over funds and purchased a lulzbot (Taz5). As far as I know that thing is still doing the work they need it to do.
          • manyxcxi 6y ago
            Luckily the Replicator 2 and 2X were when MakerBot was still trying (or pretending) to be open source. The hotends were standard-ish MK8 (or 10). Everything was pretty serviceable on them as long as you didn’t need to fix the motherboard. The printers after that switched to the new hotends that are not user serviceable. It boggles my mind why any home user or tinkerer would ever sign up for that crap. BUT... My brother in law teacher, who teaches various middle school classes and groups use them. I asked why they would waste so much money and he had a response that made it all make sense to me. He doesn’t have time to keep them all running all the time (like we had to do with the old ones) and when one goes down he gets replacement parts from MB at a discount, slaps it in, and they’re up and running again. Apparently the latest ones are fairly reliable and it doesn’t happen all that often either. So I guess I would sum it up as not for me, but I could see why some would.
  • yitchelle 6y ago
    But are these printers open source thus allowing it to be tinkered?
• fsflover 6y ago
  See also: https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894) 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.
  • cocoapuffs7 6y ago
    Yes. But this is unrelated to the question they asked.
    • teknopaul 6y ago
      [citation needed]
      • zeckalpha 6y ago
        My printer is out of yellow ink but it won’t let me print in Black and White mode.
    • fsflover 6y ago
      I don't think so. The current situation suggests that we really need an open-source printer, because otherwise there is no privacy at all.
      • kube-system 6y ago
        The question wasn’t whether there was a need. The question was why there isn’t one. That agreement doesn’t prevent you or anyone else from making your own design.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• detaro 6y ago
  Printers are cheap and widely available, which leaves a DIY printer which is going to be slower, more error-prone and more expensive as a very niche idea. There is a clear benefit to buying or building an open hobby 3D printer, whereas that's harder to argue for a 2D one - while there is a lot of crap around, there's enough workable choices, aftermarket inks/toner works, you likely won't be modifying/tuning a 2D printer the same way you maybe would with a 3D printer, ... Ink delivery is likely the main challenge (although I've seen some low-res attempts), combined with the speed and precision needed for a good printer - reaching a few hundred DPI requires positioning things quite precisely. Laser printers are interesting, but then you need specialized parts like the drum that I'd expect to be difficult to produce in single quantities. Open pen plotters are a thing, but again not typically used for normal printing duties.
  • tweetle_beetle 6y ago
    I also wouldn't underestimate the challenge of moving paper. I once spoke to someone who worked for Kodak (or a similar company - it was a long time ago) who said that they acquired another printer company purely because their paper moving technology was excellent and it would have taken years to develop an equivalent quality of engineering internally. This was before the present day race to the bottom in the printer market.
    • colinb 6y ago
      If you haven't read it already, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/why-paper-jams-persist https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/why-paper-jams... is a lot of fun.
      • aconst 6y ago
        A bit more than ten years ago I worked for Ricoh on an embedded software that was reporting the state of printer. Had a lot of fun trying to fold papers in different ways to try to trigger jams at different place of the printer to test that we were reporting jams accurately :)
      • 6y ago
• lpfabiani 6y ago
  I worked for a while in the R&D department of HP printer division. As @jacquesm said, good 2D printer costs peanuts. The amount of R&D in color quality, speed and other parameters is huge. There were a lot of teams involved: mechanical, electrical, software, chemical... And because of that investment, there are thousands of patents that the big players are continuously paying each other for. It's a very old market with a lot of legacy. For most of us, a printer is something for home photos, some documents, and so, but that's only a little part of the cake: the money is in professional printing, ads, designers, etc. Once that is said, it should be possible to work in a general-purpose open source 2d printer. The open community has achieved bigger goals. The biggest problem I can see is the entry barrier: to get a very basic printer, you have to invest thousands of time with a lot of knowledge in different areas, when a basic printer, even from the large companies, is not very expensive. I think that one of the only chances we have for that to happen is that a company frees its designs and patents and community starts working from there.
  • teknopaul 6y ago
    bit of a non-argument this. Existence of cheap alternatives misses the point of opensource, its not about cost. ref: free as in beer vs free as in speech.
    • ceceron 6y ago
      Sure, but money is a very effective motivational power. If something is expensive, there is a higher need to produce an alternative.
    • adwn 6y ago
      I think you're missing the main argument: It would take a lot of money and cross-domain knowledge to design and build a passable printer from scratch. Contrast that with software, where all you need is time and a low to medium power computer. In fact, compared to software open source, all other open source engineering is non-existent (relative to OSS, not in absolute terms).
      • 6y ago
• ent 6y ago
  There's at least this: https://hackaday.io/project/167446-diy-inkjet-printer https://hackaday.io/project/167446-diy-inkjet-printer 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.
  • Fnoord 6y ago
    The printers are cheap (if you also need a scanner price is going up a little). The ink isn't cheap though, its artificially high, and all the major printer manufacturers actively hamper your ability to go for a non-branded ink version. Cause that is where their profit margins lie.
• PeterisP 6y ago
  First, accurate and reliable mechanical manipulation of paper is tricky, to get all kinds of different paper stock to feed reliably without jams and position in the same place. Second, decent reproduction of e.g. text at decent DPI requires more accuracy in head positioning than what you need for basic 3d printing. So to me it seems that the big issue is not that a random cheap standard printer would be cheaper, but rather than the home-built version is likely to get worse results than what you can get in store for peanuts.
  • teknopaul 6y ago
    Big point about OS for me is hackability what if instead of printing ink on paper you want to print fungi spores on jelly.
    • teknopaul 6y ago
      or names on birthday cakes. cutting guides on wood. UV paint on metal. Jokes on toilet roll :) thinking there might be mileage in this idea. clearly a mod from a 3D printer design would be where to start. standardise ink delivery / modules for different materials with different characteristics. A standardised printer driver for Linux and other platforms would get a lot or re-us.
      • ryankrage77 6y ago
        Attaching a ballpoint pen to a 3D printer/CNC machine/laser cutter seems like a good start. It would be low DPI and slow, but fine for drawing and larger text.
      • NikolaeVarius 6y ago
        Open source Pen Plotters/ Pick and Place machines all already exist and are common in the Maker world
• sparkling 6y ago
  Here is a business idea: the printer that just works. Requirements: - laser printer that works with non-proprietary toners - USB plug & play on all major operating systems - Network printing via WiFi and ethernet - No 2GB bloatware installation required, i dont want your shitty photo management software, just give me the driver - Replaceable parts
  • minot 6y ago
    Brother is probably your best bet.
    • dsr_ 6y ago
      Pick a Brother that has all of the following features: BR/Script (their PostScript emulation) ethernet duplex And you will be fairly happy. If any of those are missing, you're buying an inferior line.
      • sparkling 6y ago
        Thanks, i'll look into it. I currently have a Samsung laser toner (M2026W). I bought it because its farily compact and blends in to my little home office corner in the living room. The duplex machines tend to be a bit larger, a pitty. Printing - when it works - is pretty good, just the WiFi is extremly unreliable and i end up having to re-configure the WiFi from scratch by connecting via USB and using some proprietary Samsung bloatware. Horrible.
        • minot 6y ago
          > just the WiFi is extremly unreliable do you have an option to use an Ethernet cable?
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    I bought an HP3600N about 15 years ago for something like $700. I’m not 100% sure if it has USB because it hangs off my network (which then Ubiquiti devices provide WiFi). It’s worked reliably and 3rd party toner is readily available and works well. If a major component wore out or failed, it would probably be cheaper to replace the unit than the part, but parts are technically available. I’ve had an excellent networked color laser at home for around $75/yr including toner.
• ragebol 6y ago
  A FDM 3D printer is mechanically relatively simple; it's more akin to a 3D plotter: it's a vector thing. Household 2D printers do bitmaps. There's 3D bitmap printers as well, like the SLA resin printers and laser sintering. The bitmap thing at a high resolution requires higher precision equipment than a typical 3D printer which makes it more difficult to do as a hobbyist. Not impossible, but a factor.
  • KMnO4 6y ago
    Yes, I learned a lot about inverse kinematics when I was upgrading my 3d printer to be used as a 2d plotter (simply printing a pen holder and figuring out how to create the GCODE). Drawing a circle with X/Y stepper motors is more involved than you'd think. You can either resolve every step with a high resolution (command the steppers to move fractions of a millimeter at a time), or approximate the curve and let the printer do its own IK to figure out how to best represent them in real space. Both have advantages/disadvantages. The high resolution approach can product more accurate lines, but can sometimes require more computation than the little MCU is capable of (which can cause inaccuracy of plotting as the printer fails to keep up)
• pritovido 6y ago
  You answered your question with "apart from the nozzle" It is the nozzle. Everything else is very simple to make because it is already done for 3d printers that are more complex than 2d printers(if you do not consider the nozzle). 5 years or so ago I made a 2d plotter with friends at my 3d printers community with the reverse engineering knowledge that we had about a specific cartridge with nozzles on it. Printing with ink was easy, very easy. But we were interested in using it for 3d print wax, not so easy. You need to manufacture nozzles, and that requires lots of money. That requires manufacturing plants. Very cheap in volume, but requires volume. Open source has not volume in the millions, like big companies have, and those companies are not going to sell you the nozzles so you commoditize their professional field like linux did.
  • abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    Why can't you 3D print a nozzle? Or are there electronics in there too?
    • NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
      ... because the channels through which the ink is propelled are only microns wide, and the ink volumes which are distributed per drop are in the picoliter range which requires a complex piezo-electric control system.
      • marketingPro 6y ago
        If this topic turns out to be the start of a FOSS, I'll join as a (senior) design engineer. Find one that doesn't have a patent and reverse engineer it. I imagine the first/original control system was extremely difficult to develop. But since the technology already exists you can reverse engineer it. After that, you pay a supplier to make parts. In my experience, these suppliers will end up redesigning to match better with their process, but still meets critical specifications. I'd post my contact info, but I believe I'm targeted by an HN mod.
        • 6y ago
• bullen 6y ago
  I would check out Axidraw instead, much better! https://axidraw.com https://axidraw.com
• teddyh 6y ago
  I wish that the intelligence in printers would migrate back to the computer. Having printers with their own complex formats (PCL, PostScript, etc.) only makes them inscrutable and lends itself to proprietary competing formats and printouts which never gets quite right. I think the original NeXT machine was on the right track with their simple bitmap-only laser printer, where the PostScript processing was done on the computer side.
  • gbrown 6y ago
    Given the size of the damn drivers you’d think this was already the case.
    • IanSanders 6y ago
      When the manufacturer of your printer offers a "driver-only" download, rather than "complete customer experience" version, it is quite small. Also linux.
  • wbl 6y ago
    This has already happened. The printer under my desk has crap drivers that don't properly handle ligatures leading to the printer being unusable. A certified native Postscript printer would never have this problem.
  • wolrah 6y ago
    That's interesting that you feel this way, personally I take the exact opposite position. I want printer drivers to be a thing of the past. I just want to pass the printer a file that represents a document and let it handle things for me. Some kind of standard format, probably something in the Postscript/PDF family tree. Likewise for scanners. I want to just have a HTTP API or something like that where I just "GET" an endpoint and the scanner hands me a file in some reasonable format. The drivers are always the worst part of devices that allow computers to interact with paper, so let's get rid of them altogether.
    • teddyh 6y ago
• thdrdt 6y ago
  "In the 3D printing world, there are plenty of open source choices, ..." The 3D printers you are talking about are very simple. Those are Fused Deposition Modeling and StereoLithography printers. But there are also 3D printers that work like 2D printers. For example Selective Laser Sintering and PolyJet printers. Just like 2D printers they are very hard to make. Those type of printers are also not available as open source choice.
• maeln 6y ago
  Not a printer, but there is an open-source printing press: https://openpressproject.com/ https://openpressproject.com/
• jituc 6y ago
  I would say,it is difficulty to access of technology. Inkjet Printers are either pizo or heat nozel based, both tech works at microlevel and are built with semiconductor based fabrication methods, which is mostly outof reach of enthusiasts.
• skocznymroczny 6y ago
  I think the reason is open source communities are more attracted towards tinkering and experimental technologies, and 3D print is much more interesting than 2D printing. 3D printing always has that idea of a manufacturing revolution behind it, 2D printing was a revolution centuries ago and it's a boring technology now.
  • spicybright 6y ago
    Yup. Best case scenario after spending tons of hours and money building a decent open source printer, is you match the abilities of a $50 off the shelf printer you can buy right now.
• dddddaviddddd 6y ago
  I work with inkjet printers in research for my Masters program. I found the three blog posts about printing on this blog to be helpful: https://www.kylescholz.com/ https://www.kylescholz.com/ 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.
  • TimSchumann 6y ago
    And if you're one of the lucky 10,000 today, Bill Hammack over at the EngineerGuy youtube channel has this[0] fantastic video explaining how piezoelectric microdot printers work. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DckWNwE7R4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DckWNwE7R4
• kube-system 6y ago
  Mostly the nozzle. The nozzle for an FDM 3D printer could be easily built with desktop tooling from a hardware store. The nozzle for even a cheap inkjet is not within the reach of hobbyists. Open source 2D plotters do exist.
• tgflynn 6y ago
  In a world where screens are everywhere who needs printers ? I doubt I've printed out more than 100 documents in the last 20 years. There are still a few legacy areas where nothing else will do like legal procedures and shipping labels but for the most part printers just don't seem like a broadly useful enough technology to interest most open source enthusiasts.
• timonoko 6y ago
  I have Samsung CLP-310 Color Laser Printer from 2008. It was the last one ever, which you can force-reset so it does count how many times a color cassette been used. I can refill those cassettes from half liter buckets from ebay for €10. It is just incredibly reliable. One and only problem is that only the XP-windows Samsung printer drivers work truly well. But I have 2008 laptop for that.
  • yrro 6y ago
    I used the open source foo2zjs driver with this printer successfully for quite a while in case that's helpful.
    • timonoko 6y ago
      Various Linux drivers work quite ok on text and cartoons. But the Samsung Windows XP driver has some special magic to make perfect photographs. Not even Samsung's own Linux drivers can do that.
  • specialist 6y ago
    I'm way more interested in laser than inkjet. I casually poked around to see if I could find some old HP LaserJets. Do some teardowns, get some part numbers, maybe transplant a Raspberry Pi for the brains.
• salawat 6y ago
  https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d... 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.
• vslira 6y ago
  Friendly reminder that rms launched the FLOSS movement because he was incensed when he couldn't program a printer at MIT to do something he wanted.
  • tsjq 6y ago
    So true. And so sad that there's no open source printers yet. :(
  • callamdelaney 6y ago
    TIL Richard Stallman's middle name is Matthew.
    • somehnguy 6y ago
      Thanks for point this out. In my head it's always Richard 'Mainline' Stallman, like a competitive video game handle, no idea why.. I knew it was absolutely wrong but never cared enough to Google it. Now I know.
      • self_awareness 6y ago
        If RMS is involved, maybe try DuckDuckGo'ing instead of Googling, I'm sure he would prefer it that way
  • jandrese 6y ago
    I read Kernigan's memoir on Unix and one of the things that surprised me is how much of the book is devoted to Bell Labs trying to get their fucking printer to work. These are people like Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Alfred Aho, and the like wasting months on the broken drivers and flaky hardware of their document printer.
• sergeykish 6y ago
  Because RepRap [1]. Proprietary 3D printers already were on the market. 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV0Tjwq7Uc0
• felipemesquita 6y ago
  I don’t think the nozzle would have to be open source for this to be useful, just a printer that can be modified to print on things other than paper and be cool about whatever cartridges you put it it would be great. Inkjet cartridges are a little messy, but easy to refill at home, whit the printers DRM like check’s being the main issue. This project reverse engineered cartridge control and developed an ESP32 controlled hand held printer: http://spritesmods.com/?art=magicbrush&page=3 http://spritesmods.com/?art=magicbrush&page=3
• kybernetikos 6y ago
  I have a multifunction A3 printer / scanner from a major manufacturer with an auto feeder and 3 other trays/inputs. It has USB input, network cable, wifi, internal tanks, fax capability, a colour touch screen.... The hardware works very well. The software is weird and inconsistent. It can do some very useful things if you access the scanning function in one, incredibly convoluted way, but not in other ways. It can scan to a network share, but you have to put the password in every time. It's frustrating because it's so good and so bad at the same time. I would love to have an open source firmware in it.
• Inhibit 6y ago
  I'm unsure about the statement. I've repaired many printers mechanically. The hardware is generally repairable and the mechanical parts aren't proprietary. The software on the printers is whatever you buy. Some of them run on available print languages that you can code up your own driver for should you really want to. And for the example cited, cartridges, Epson had offered a more expensive printer with a do whatever you want ink setup. And Brother lasers have so far accepted any carts I use without complaint. As for hard to manufacture the entire printer is a molded plastic to reduce cost (massively) and a fabrication plant made printhead. Mass manufacture only for the huge price-break.
• cloudhead 6y ago
  what's a 2d printer
• morpheuskafka 6y ago
  A 3D printer needs only a comparatively simple metal novel, and the rest of the printer is just moving that around, some other things like heating the pad to help things work smoothly, and processing a file into a set of movement instructions for the head. A 2D printer needs to deal with four or more liquids (ink) or fine pieces of plastic (toner). Rather than just heating the ink up, a tiny electrical current is used to squeeze out a drop at a time. Everywhere the liquid touches can get dried up, and needs to be self-cleaned. And then you have to address the color mixing algorithm, calibration, ICC profiles, etc. There are waste ink absorbers, print heads, etc. many of which involve specialty materials that can only be made in a precision factory, which would not be available for open source development.
• bearbawl 6y ago
  Because 2D printing is serious?
• awiesenhofer 6y ago
  reading through the comments here the answer seems to be: good printers are cheap and nozzles are hard. But how about the openwrt-approach? Keep the printer with the good nozzle and starting with the software such a cheap printer runs, trying to get that foss first - jailbreaking your printer if you will. Or swapping the board for a raspberry pi or similar? That would at least help against closed drivers, cartridge restrictions, page counters etc.
• fimdomeio 6y ago
  3d printing is exciting new tech. Paper print is way over it's most exciting times. This would make great advances in developing a open source 2d printer not be that much exciting. And that's probably also why there's so much focus on pen plotters they look special like vynil discs. And that triggers interest.
• zajio1am 6y ago
  In the 80s there was DIY 2D plotter Alfi [1] for ZX Spectrum. I had and used one. This year, i visited my friends trying to run current DIY 3D printer, and funny thing is that it was plagued by similar isses like the 2D plotter several decades before. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq2fGkQO_gQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq2fGkQO_gQ
• PaulHoule 6y ago
  2-d printing is mature, I think everyone has high standards. When it comes to 3-d printing I see two attitudes around me: (1) People who are involved with "making" from a blue collar standpoint think that "3-d printing is cool but the quality of the product is subpar" (2) People around the engineering department at my local Uni who 3-d print everything they can A lot of the 3-d printing market targets type (1) and enthusiasts. If those enthusiasts were inkjet enthusiasts they wouldn't mind getting prints spoiled with an ink explosion 5% of the time.
• analog31 6y ago
  In addition to what's been mentioned, printing has much tighter tolerance requirements, e.g., to distinguish between "h" and "b" at a small font size. It actually has to be a very good spatial representation of the design. And how cheap printers actually accomplish this with crude bits of plastic and stamped metal is pretty amazing. On the other hand, 3d printed objects may only need to satisfy overall mechanical needs, or be suggestive of the shape that they model, to serve a purpose. Most 3d printing that I've seen needs a bit of hand tooling at the end, to really be useful.
• ezconnect 6y ago
  Patents are not an issue on having opensource 2D printers but the average hackers don't have the manufacturing capability to make an inkjet print head. There are lots of design on the internet on how to build your own inkjet printer. I think it's not exciting enough to explore in a garage since we can pickup a decent printer from the garbage. I am more excited on parts I can salvage from an office printer than thinking of building a better one.
• payne92 6y ago
  Related: I have a HP 4000 with duplex, which is an absolute unit (beast) of a small workgroup laser printer. It's 20+yrs old, still going strong and parts are easy to get. BUT, it's compute bound with modern print jobs, and is missing modern protocols like Bonjour. What if someone open sourced a legacy printer? I'd love to re-brain this printer.
  • zdw 6y ago
    See about replacing the network card on the printer, or updating its firmware. Newer firmwares frequently support Bonjour, and have various security updates. Replaceable NIC in printers are pretty great, especially when you can buy them for 1/10th of original cost on the used market.
    • payne92 6y ago
      They stopped manufacturing the HP LaserJet 4000 over 21 years ago, and the jetdirect EIO network card (J3111A) not long after that. If there is a newer network card or firmware that supports this printer, I’d love to hear about it.
      • zdw 6y ago
        The 620n and 635n EIO cards support Bonjour: https://h10057.www1.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provisioner/05/J7934G.htm https://h10057.www1.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provision... and http://www.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provisioner/99/J7961G http://www.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provisioner/99/J79...
        • payne92 6y ago
          Awesome, thanks! I didn't realize that the newer EIO cards were so backward compatible.
  • floatboth 6y ago
    Put a different server in front of it instead of letting it hang on the network by itself? I have a relatively modern LaserJet that does IPP (and Bonjour) over WiFi, but it doesn't do 5GHz WiFi, it doesn't do IPv6, so I have it plugged into a server over USB instead, and the server running CUPS exposes it on the network.
• moonbug 6y ago
  Because they cost nothing to buy.
• dirtybirdnj 6y ago
  I'm actively working on one of these right now. What you are talking about I refer to as 2.5 axis machine vs the traditional 3 axis PLA/FDM printer. Aka a plotter. Using an inkjet cartridge or a laserjet toner on a piece of paper outside the context of the printer it was designed for seems foolhardy at best... but what about moving a pen up and down? Shameless plug, I've been working on a project called Robot Draws You! (www.robotdrawsyou.com). I'm currently using an off-the-shelf machine and the software / cloud hoops it requires me to jump through were enough to convince me to build my own machine. For the proof of concept I'm using a Duet2 board, but eventually I want to write some code that will sit on a raspi and talk to the Duet to allow the machine a more granular drip-feed style control over the "printing" process". More on that later. "Why is it hard?" The challenge starts with taking in a given SVG file, making sure it scales / fits within the bounds of a given writeable area, and then generating GCODE to send to the printer / plotter. Because there's no extruder, custom GCODE needs to get created to take advantage of the GPIO pins to move a servo up/down to control the pen. The software challenge is replacing the much-hated cloud interface I complain about. It may suck, but it does a lot and it actually works. The more I use "the cloud", the more I am reminded it does not provide adequate controls/info on: - The size of the rendered image relative to the writeable area - The order in which the layers of the file get rendered - Information about the progress / time left per layer - Repeatability of failed layers without re-writing entire project So crazy me decided "I'll make my own plotter UI and hardware!" It's slow going but it's really fun and I enjoy the challenge. The end solution is going to be a mix of hardware and software that allows you to upload an SVG / vector file to a web UI, start/stop/repeat layers and control the order of the rendering. I like to make drawings of people, and also want to use this to make gigantic maps as well.
  • sleepybrett 6y ago
    .. I mean I'm working on my own plotter too, but only because I'd like something larger format than my off the shelf axidraw. There are tons of OS boards and software already developed around this problem, you don't have to do it all yourself.
• pwinnski 6y ago
  On October 23, 2012, I paid $133.76 for a "Brother HL-2270DW Compact Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex" and I have only ever used $12-15 third-party toner cartridges with it. I had to buy a replacement drum unit in 2016, that was $22.59 (third party, of course). I find it unlikely that an open-source DIY printer is going to result in something better or cheaper than what I've got.
  • drewg123 6y ago
    The one thing that it would do is to eliminate the search for a well supported printer on linux, as you would know that the open source ones were well supported. The situation that always seems to happen to me is I need a printer ASAP. When shopping, I might find support for the Brother HL-2270DW in linux, but my local store might have a "Brother HL-2275DW" in stock (made up model number). So I'm wondering if the driver for the 2270 will work on the 2275, etc.
    • floatboth 6y ago
      Pretty much any modern printer with a network interface supports IPP.
• feralimal 6y ago
  Or washing machines, dishwashers, cars or even planes? I'm afraid the answer is due to the fact that we live under a corporatocracy, and that this is the way things roll round here! Good luck with anyone who is trying to get a open source version of whatever out there. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, I suspect it won't work out, but I have my fingers crossed for you!
• 6510 6y ago
  Maybe if you move the printer head over the paper (like in 3D) rather than drag paper though the device you could make something simple (b/w) with impressive life span. I have no idea if such printers exist.
• lsllc 6y ago
  This is an interesting project, a 3D printed 2D CAD drawing machine. Basically a 3D printed plotter! GRBL Plotter Elegoo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYqx5wg4oLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYqx5wg4oLU
• gaze 6y ago
  It's the nozzle. Let's suppose you really wanted to design your own nozzle... you could use something like MUMPS, which is $5,800 for 15 dice, plus 100 for each additional. You have to wrestle together 15 people to pay 400 bucks (or 20 to pay 300, and so forth) for a printhead that probably won't work. Figure it'll take several iterations and everyone needs to be in for thousands and thousands of dollars. It's doable but only among a group of very wealthy hobbyists. People with this kinda money typically gravitate towards high vacuum projects and microwave electronics
  • gaze 6y ago
    This is ignoring all the high-speed cameras and lab equipment for characterizing the electrical and rheological properties of the ink you shoot through it...
• sleepybrett 6y ago
  There are many open source pen plotters. Welcome back to the 80s!
• nendroid 6y ago
  You have to analyze the reality of this world. First off open source cannot exist without closed source. Imagine if everything in the world went open source. Then nobody would be getting paid, everyone would starve because they're giving away there work for free. Most things in this world are profit oriented products produced as a direct result a capitalism. Open source is an offshoot phenomenon in software arising because software is both easier than other forms of engineering (see thousands of bootcamps) and also easily copyable. However it should be known that most software developers need to have a job in closed source software in order to pay the bills. Whenever you see something open source you have to know it's an offshoot phenomenon. These are side projects spawned by intense interest but ultimately still a side project to a person's main line of work which is ultimately profitable. Be surprised that there are 3D printers because it's abnormal. The fact that there are no open source 2D printers arises because there's lack of interest and because there's no profit in open source 2D printers.
• wmf 6y ago
  A different take on this question: Is there a whitebox/ODM/shanzai print engine that could be combined with an open controller board or RPi? What companies actually make the hard parts of printers?
• notatoad 6y ago
  i think the 2D equivalent to a 3D printer is not a regular printer, but a plotter. and there's a fairly robust community around hacking pen plotters. for eg, https://github.com/beardicus/awesome-plotters https://github.com/beardicus/awesome-plotters
• blihp 6y ago
  It's not so much that it's hard, but rather so far just hasn't been worth it. The average small business owner / consumer spends what, $100-200 for a printer and maybe $100/year on consumables if they print a moderate amount? The pain point just isn't there compared to the 3D printing world in the pre-RepRap days of a little over a decade ago when a printer cost thousands of dollars and $100 in consumables in a week or less. For something as inexpensive as 2D printers to really get some interest in the 'open' world, they'd probably need to start being as obnoxious as the mobile phone market. Think changing printer languages (i.e. PostScript and PCL) in backwards incompatible ways every year or two and requiring changes to 'new and improved' incompatible consumables (i.e. ink and paper) every so often while cutting off supply to existing customers of the old consumables well before the useful life of the printer has been reached.
• drnex 6y ago
  open source pen plotter: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2504587 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2504587
• Motorace007 6y ago
  Nothing but the highest quality Luxury Escort in Paris: luxury escort https://sex-fucktory.com/escort-models/luxury https://sex-fucktory.com/escort-models/luxury. International escort agency - only exclusive escort girls and TOP models from France in different cities. Real girls, best prices. High class escorts models as well as occasional girls next door, all genuine natural beauties, exclusive, smart, cultivated, open-minded and perfect. Find the ideal entertainment, live your wishes, with discrete and exclusive escorts from Paris.
• stakkur 6y ago
  Printer manufacturers don't make money on printers. They make money on ink. Making money on ink requires a closed system to require the ink purchase. There is aftermarket ink, but companies are always working to defeat it.
• musicale 6y ago
  I don't know about 2d printers, but there are lots of open source/DIY 2d plotters.
• 6510 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHX6tHdQGiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHX6tHdQGiQ