3 ms·
We really need to design a Free (as in freedom) open source printer. It _is_ sort of ironic there are quite a few open source 3d printers but no open source 2d
by exabrial 6y ago
We really need to design a Free (as in freedom) open source printer. It _is_ sort of ironic there are quite a few open source 3d printers but no open source 2d printers.
I really like the simplicity of the Creality Ender3. The controller board is an Arduino and it uses commodity stepper drivers and stepper motors. The complicated specialized parts are the hot-end, which has now been somewhat standardized.
Would an open source laser be out of reach? Maybe we could pick a cheap, readily-available toner cartridge and design a printer around it.
- milquetoastaf 6y agoThere was a big HN thread a few weeks ago on open source 2d printers. It seems the biggest bottleneck would be the nozzle designs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24786721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24786721
- exabrial 6y agoOh interesting! That's why I think the "design a printer around an accessible cartridge", or starting with a laser printer would be a better approach.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kube-system 6y agoLiterally speaking, a 3d printer becomes a 2d printer if you unplug an axis. You can get open source kits that are basically this, called plotters. The issue is that hobbyists can't achieve the resolution necessary for printing texts or images, no matter how many axes the machine has. A $30 inkjet printer at Walmart has easily 10x or 20x the resolution of a desktop 3d printer. That kind of precision is hard to do without specialized machinery. The people with that ability are, well, printer manufacturers.