11 ms·

Inkjets are for more than just printing

171 points by sohkamyung 3y ago

kstrauser 3y ago
It's true! I dropped one out of my 2nd story window onto a hard drive I needed to sanitize, and it did a nice job of it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- teeray 3y ago
  They’re great at cleaning out your wallet too!
Cheer2171 3y ago
> While laser printers do the big printing jobs in commercial settings, the inkjet printer has become the printer most of us use at home and at the office. I don't know who "most of us" is, but I had to check the year it was published because this is so wrong for everyone I know, home or office. Black and white laser printers are price competitive with color inkjet printers in the short and long term for home or small office use. Most people don't need color, or if they do, inkjet is slow and low quality and more expensive than retail print shops for things like photos or full page flyers.
- sys_64738 3y ago
  I got a couple of laser printers for 50 bucks and when they ran out of ink I just toss them and get another. Inkjet printers are rubbish.
  - DaSHacka 3y ago
    Are the inkjet or laser printers rubbish in this scenario? Sounds like you're constantly replacing the laser ones
    - sys_64738 3y ago
      No they’re pretty good but I don’t print much anymore. Dell laser printer is eight years old and still using original toner cartridge.
  - lupire 3y ago
    Laser printers don't have ink, and almost never run out of toner, and the toner is cheap. Why on earth would you toss them?
    - sys_64738 3y ago
      Toss is probably the wrong word. Added to the e-Waste pile in my basement.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I splurged on a color laser. It's brilliant and cheap for printing color documents. It's also really bad at printing photos. Know what's great for printing photos? The Walgreens up the block. It prints them waaaaayyyy more cheaply and nicely than any inkjet I've ever owned. The 2 times a year I want to frame and hang up a nice photo, I upload it to them and then walk over an hour later to pick it up. There's no plausible reason I'd ever buy an inkjet again.
  - lloydatkinson 3y ago
    > It's also really bad at printing photos. Yours in particular or generally laser printers? If the last one, that sounds surprising
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - joecool1029 3y ago
      > If the last one, that sounds surprising Is it? Soho color laser printers are calibrated and designed to print color documents, not photos. They use CMYK (4) colors and inkjets designed for photos use 6 or more. It's possible to do photos with it but generally the laser printers most people have are not really designed for high quality photo (where a cheaper inkjet would be), they will show banding and be less color accurate.
      - lupire 3y ago
        Inkjets use 6 colors? I've never seen that at consumer retail. I see 3 color plus black.
        joecool1029 3y ago
        They can, yes. Here's a HP doc on 5 color ones with photo cartridge that are fairly common: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01839024 https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01839024 Light cyan and light magenta are usually the additional colors added https://www.macworld.com/article/152010/6inkhetprinters.html https://www.macworld.com/article/152010/6inkhetprinters.html There are 7 color printers from Epson that add a dilute black.
- tombert 3y ago
  Yeah, I sort of swore a blood oath that I would never buy another ink jet printer 10 years ago because one of my color cartridges dried up, and it wouldn't let me even print black and white, despite the fact that the black and white cartridge appeared to be fine. Replacing the color cartridge was like $70. Instead of fixing this problem, I threw the ink jet away, and found a used Samsung ML-2010 on ebay for $60. It prints documents just fine, the only things I ever bother printing are forms that I have to sign. Now I have a 15 year old HP office printer, also only black and white, and I genuinely like it. If I ever need to print color for whatever reason, I'll walk to one of the print shops a few blocks from me. It's not worth keeping a full color printer in my house that will work exactly once.
  - II2II 3y ago
    After avoiding inkjet printers for some 30 years, I purchased a colour inkjet printer after comparing the cost per page to a colour laser. Granted, I went for a tank based (rather than cartridge based) printer. Will I be happy with the decision 10 years down the road (which is the age of my current laser printer)? I have no idea. But the point is that you can avoid the cartridge based inkjets and get something where you refill the colours according to your needs. I also suspect that some of the applications mentioned in the article aren't using the built-to-a-price-point inkjet printers. Quality varies. Sometimes you have to check the reviews and pay a bit more for that quality.
    - tombert 3y ago
      Which model did you get?
      - LoganDark 3y ago
        I don't know if this is what they purchased, but EcoTank is a good term to search for if you want an inkjet that won't charge you an arm and a leg for proprietary cartridges. The basic idea is that instead of swappable cartridges, they just have ink tanks that you top up from a squirt bottle. These bottles are cheaper than any cartridge while containing like ten times the amount of ink.
- lmm 3y ago
  If you just want to occasionally print out concert tickets / photocopy id documents / etc., half-assing it by getting a that only does black and white is the worst of both worlds - better to either save the space by not owning a printer at all, or avoid ever having to go to a print shop by having a printer that can do colour when you need it. If you're actually printing out a lot of documents then yeah laser makes sense, but I've never understood the HN home laser dogma.
  - tverbeure 3y ago
    I almost never print, but when I do I don't want to struggle with an inkjet printer that has dried up nozzles. A $140 Brother laser printer will pretty much work for the rest of your life.
    - Liftyee 3y ago
      This anecdotally holds up, at least for Brother laser printers made in the 2010's. Over a decade later it's still working perfectly. Granted I do have to nudge a mechanical part back into place every year, but the service manual is so good that maintenance is near-trivial.
    - lmm 3y ago
      I've been using inkjets for decades and never had this "dried up nozzles" problem, shrug.
      - lupire 3y ago
        Do you print at least weekly?
        lmm 3y ago
        No. I print when I need to, and there have been stretches of at least several months when I haven't printed anything.
  - xmprt 3y ago
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > I don't know who "most of us" is… Meaning, ~75% of us (see pages 14-16): https://o1.rtcdn.net/uploads/2022/04/Issue123EN2205-V4.pdf https://o1.rtcdn.net/uploads/2022/04/Issue123EN2205-V4.pdf
  - lupire 3y ago
    The article says that 75% of pages printed in home/office desktop is laser (the blue segment of the pie). I suspect most of us printer owners own inkjets, but people who print a lot of pages use laser, while inkjets are decorative after terrible experience with the first cartridge.
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      > The article says that 75% of pages printed in home/office desktop is laser (the blue segment of the pie). Thank you, you're right — this supports the parent commenter's point for the combined business and home markets. I wasn't able to find any data on the breakdown for the home market specifically, but based on my social circle I'd guess COVID/remote work significantly increased home laser purchases. > …while inkjets are decorative after terrible experience with the first cartridge. Having bought an inkjet after a two-decade "only laser/LED" rule, tank/CISS ink is making inkjets nice again. Still, I wouldn't recommend an inkjet if you (1) never intend to print photos/images or (2) regularly go more than a month without printing.
malfist 3y ago
It starts out claiming that 1980s offices were more noisy than today, but I don't know that that is true. We don't even have cubicles anymore. You're lucky if your team and seven others aren't sharing the same conference table "open office" space.
- II2II 3y ago
  Those old hammer printers were loud. Commercial printers were often housed in cases with sound-deadening materials, even though they usually occupied a room dedicated to computers (with the offices having terminals). Workers in smaller offices and personal computer users often had to put up with the relatively loud high-pitched drone of dot-matrix printers, though some would get enclosures to deaden the sound. Even if open offices somehow manage to be louder, it is an entirely different quality of noise.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    I interned at a stodgy 80s-style company in the 90s (I'm sure the office was exactly the same as the decade before). It was nice actually, compared to my "modern" office. The printers and copiers were in different places so they generally weren't bothersome if you were at your desk. The main noise annoyances were 1) telephones ringing sometimes--those old phones were loud, and 2) neighboring workers talking. They didn't have separate cubicles, but rather cubicle walls were used to separate workgroups from each other. I guess 3) computer keyboards were noisy back then, but at this place most workers didn't have computers at their desks yet. Peak quietness for offices was, in my experience, in the late 90s or early 2000s. Everyone had separate cubicles with sound-absorbing walls. I really miss those days. Of course, everyone's experiences will be different. Different companies had different office layouts, though there definitely have been clear trends.
    - 082349872349872 3y ago
      Offices at the office. With walls, and doors that shut, and sometimes even windows that opened. They were relatively easy to find up until the late 90s when I stopped "going in"; maybe if people want to fill their expensive commercial real estate you all can convince the suits to bring them back?
kazinator 3y ago
That's all nice; it's still incredibly stupid to buy consumer inkjets for home or office use. They are garbage. Inkjets produce nicer pictures than toner-based printers (LED, Laser) at great expense and hassle. You're better off using an online service for bulk printing of pictures. For document printing, they completely lose to toner-based. They are slow. They have to be used regularly or they dry up, which is a hassle to fix and perhaps cannot be. I can ignore my LED printer for weeks or months, and be confident that when I need to count on it to print something, it will print. Also, to begin with, inkjet cartridges are tiny compared to toner, and most of the content is the liquid carrier. Toner is 100% solids, and the cartridges are much larger.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > Inkjets produce nicer pictures than toner-based printers (LED, Laser) at great expense and hassle. Tank-based printers have changed this equation a lot, FWIW. I haven't seen a cartridge-based printer that I'd recommend.
  - kazinator 3y ago
    I see. Right; I'm vaguely aware of those things through passive exposure to ads. I've mostly written off inkjets, so my attention has been minimal. Refillable, big tanks do make a difference. If that's the deal breaker for someone, they may be worth another look.
BMc2020 3y ago
Basically if it's a liquid you can inkjet it. (basically each nozzle has a chamber with a tube leading into it and a hole in the top. A resistor heater boils the drop and it spits out the hole). I always wondered if anyone ever tried to make a fuel injector out of one. (the finer the mist you can make your gasoline, the better it combusts). Source: I looked at thousands of these things under a microscope at a company that makes lots of them. 0/10 would not recommend.
- samstave 3y ago
  I wonder if you could make a really good fuel injected motor utilizing these for RC/Drone engines. An RC/drone I think that would be neat would be a 'diesel electric' (not diesel) - but a motor utilizing this for injecting into a generator for a gas-electric helicopter. Like a Chinook where the interior is the gas-electric generator, but the overall design modeled after the Chinook given that its the Heavy Lifter of Helos with a payload lift capacity of ~20 tons.? -- In the late 1990s I worked at a company who manufactured a lot of the physical media for various software/games/OS (Intuit/Everquest/SunOS for example) We manufatered the CDs, copy, manuals, boxes, etc - boxed and shipped it... All the CDs were printed using Brother inkjets. My buddy was a fairly famous DJ in the rave scene in the 90s - so in my off hours we would make and print his CDs... dj morgan... I designed and printed these logos onto CDs in the 90s https://i.imgur.com/6VUWeQN.png https://i.imgur.com/6VUWeQN.png (I actually designed the Decepticon Logo in circuitry when I worked at Intel - but we lost the artwork, and that was the cover - the CD was printed with the logo as drawn in circuit traces and was pretty bad ass for the 90s scene...)
- simne 3y ago
  For engine injector need high pressure. In automobile direct injector used 20 layers of piezoelectric plates to achieve this, and sure, high voltage applied.
  - regularfry 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure I've come across piezos on inkjet printers too. Can't remember the make, but resistive heating is only one way to get the ink to go splat.
qq66 3y ago
Also, products like Irrigreen (https://irrigreen.com/ https://irrigreen.com/) which uses inkjet technology to “print” an exact pattern of water onto a lawn, avoiding sprinkler overlap. (Note: am investor)
- lagniappe 3y ago
  Outside of states with high water usage cost, what is the pitch for Irrigreen?
  - nine_k 3y ago
    The few states with high cost of water, like California or Texas, can be enough of a market. BTW since they have basically a positioned spray technology, they could literally "print" things with grass, giving it different nutrients or even dispersing different seeds. Anything from a decorative striped pattern to signs of affiliation and slogans.
- getwiththeprog 3y ago
  That is a great idea. But does it really use "inkjet" technology? It looks like an adjustable rate pump with a timing or orientation chip, mapped with an app.
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  https://www.crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com/kill-your-lawn https://www.crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com/kill-your-lawn
  - memcg 3y ago
    Thank you! I'm on Step 3. KILL THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR LAWN 8 truckloads of free wood chips, free cardboard from Costco and Craigslist. Free coffee grounds, roasting chaff and burlap bags from a local coffee roaster.
ay 3y ago
I don’t know if both authors being affiliated with HP Labs is a coincidence or a sign of a conflict of interest… But the article kinda reads like a desperate last-ditch promo for the inkjets. I haven’t had an inkjet for 30 years - only black and white lasers. Starting with HL LaserJet 5L in 2000, then Samsung and now Brother (yay for their nice platform independence so they work on Linux). My Prusa 3D is also arguably spewing a material into a surface so I guess yeah, maybe I should count it as an inkjet as well, though ;-)
- Liftyee 3y ago
  With all the anti-consumer DRM shenanigans HP is trying these days (see: Instant Ink), I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
  - mikepurvis 3y ago
    Ugh, yeah my household has an instant ink subscription and it’s such an obvious scam.
- jmspring 3y ago
  HP Labs != HP corporate
  - canadianfella 3y ago
    [dead]
  - hughesjj 3y ago
    Hp labs \subset HP corporate
  - jmspring 3y ago
    Researchers have different priorities to what corporate does.
- albru123 3y ago
  Seems like the point of this article missed a lot of people entirely, since they are so fixated on consumer inkjet printers. That's a very specific case of inkjet printing, but inkjet technology is way more than that. For example continuous inkjet printers are used to label packages of many items you buy every day. There's also research about inkjet printing wearable electronics etc. None of which has a lot to do with HP.
Liftyee 3y ago
Home inkjet printers are only ideal for a niche usecase where you print lots of photos regularly (to the point where you need your own printer over a photo printing service). Their only advantage over laser printers is higher image quality. If you don't print frequently, the ink nozzles clog up (and you inevitably use a bunch of ink trying to fix them). For infrequent document printing, a laser printer will Just Print whether it's been sitting unused for an hour or a month. If you occasionally need some photos printed, using one of the myriad services will be better than replacing the inevitably gunked up ink cartridges. If you print a lot of documents, the laser printer easily outstrips the speed of an inkjet. You'll also run up huge ink fees since the cost per page of ink tends to be higher than toner. Therefore, the only reason you should get an inkjet printer is if you often need high quality colour prints (photos).
- merry_flame 3y ago
  As others have noted, some printers (for instance Epson EcoTank) have printing costs that are pretty much on par with laser printers and almost no clogging issues. People usually don't take into account energy costs when buying laser printers (toner is typically kept warm from instant, no-preheating printing) and, crucially, laser printers are terrible for indoor air quality. I therefore reached the opposite conclusion as you…
- ptero 3y ago
  I think the "occasional printing will clog up nozzles" affects some printer models more than the others. As a single data point, I used a Canon i9990 for many years. It had a very irregular use -- I would print a few 13x19 photos or a tiled panorama, or an occasional school picture of kids for the relatives. Then it would sit unused for days to months until the next job. And even with this supposedly abusive cycle it ran like new until it completely died one day. I personally had worse luck with image printing services. Maybe the machines are off, maybe the fellow who runs it does not care, but more often than not there is something subtly wrong: either the color is off, or there is a smudge at the edge or some minor artifact. My 2c.
- treflop 3y ago
  You’re posting on an article about other things inkjet is used for and then you say the only thing you need a home inkjet printer for is for photos? ???? Photos is the last thing I’d buy an inkjet printer for. I’d be using a home inkjet to make circuit boards, temporary shirts, screen printing masks, transparencies, stickers, etc.
russelg 3y ago
That full-colour 3D printer from Mikami they mention is quite awesome, with an eye-watering price! https://www.mimakiusa.com/products/3d/3duj-553/ https://www.mimakiusa.com/products/3d/3duj-553/
- ninju 3y ago
  Here's a video of a Mimaki printer at the Formnext conference 3D Printing with 10,000,000 colors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IkvzMJihuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IkvzMJihuY
- tdudhhu 3y ago
  I expected a much higher price. While $190000 is steep it doesn't seem that much for such printer. For example: Nexa3D ships SLS printers for over $500000
  - devsda 3y ago
    Before someone thinks it costs just $190 for a color 3d printer, its ~ $190K. TIL that some countries use comma and a period for separating numbers and decimals respectively and some other countries use them the other way around.
    - chgs 3y ago
      And some counties group numbers in twos rather than threes - 1,23,45,678.90 International standard is space for separators - 1 000 000. That’s a pain on a phone.
      - isametry 3y ago
        Figure space to be specific (U+2007 or &numsp). A plain space like in your million will break across lines. (And yes, that’s even more of a pain on a phone.)
Donaldwide 3y ago
[dead]
anymouse123456 3y ago
I bought my Brother color laser printer 12 years ago in a fit of HP inkjet induced rage. It just runs and runs and runs. I've bought a couple more for around the office and recommend them every time the subject of printers comes up. If you don't want GBs of bullshit malware pretending at being drivers, you're sick of the color ink shenanigans, and you want a printer that wakes up and prints every single time, get a Brother Laser printer. They're amazing. No affiliation, just a super grateful customer.
- cbozeman 3y ago
  And the sad part now is that HP Color LaserJets are hampered by such godawful software and design that I wish I had bought a Brother color laser printer. I will never make that mistake again. I have a beautiful HP Color LaserJet MFP 4301dfw that constantly loses connection to the WiFi access point and requires a reboot and/or logging into the incredibly shitty HP Smart software. I really wish HP had enterprise-grade or at least prosumer software instead of this fucking awful consumer shit. A $599 printer should have a solid software stack, and HP even markets it to small office consumers. The machine has a beautifully designed exterior and solid internals that are plagued with an absolute shit software stack. Bill Hewlett and David Packard are probably rolling over in their grave at how fucking far their laser printer division has fallen.
  - anymouse123456 3y ago
    Indeed about the founders. I'm sorry to hear you were fleeced. I highly recommend taking that monster out back and recreating our favorite scene from Office Space. HP was once a great company that innovated and made incredible technology. It was taken over by financial types in the late nineties. They sold off the test equipment core business and leaned into cost cutting. They excised any vestiges of integrity or quality wherever it could be found.
  - chrisfinazzo 3y ago
    Ethernet. Do that thing. With regard to software, I've long since accepted that HP, Brother, Canon et al can't write drivers to save their lives - and shouldn't have to - in a world where AirPrint, Chrome OS Printing, Windows IPP, or Direct IP printing exist. It's long past time for printing to be treated as an OS service, where 3rd parties write the smallest possible shim to plug into available devices.
xarope 3y ago
I used to think I needed an inkjet, but I switched to a brother laser B/W printer years ago (mainly because of the linux compatibility), and in that time, I've only wished to print a color photo ... oh wait, never!
pbj1968 3y ago
I bought some HP printer last year for $75. A couple bucks on popular auction site got me a coupon code that gave me like 16 months of free ink. Several reams of free paper. The printer experience itself is horrible. I’m constantly having to reboot it, it cannot maintain a WiFi connection, they have crippled usb on it, etc. Reviews back me up, it’s a common experience. However, it makes beautiful prints. I have printed literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages of full color. And HP dutifully sends me another cartridge without prompting. Just a couple weeks left on that trial. And the plan? Chunk it in the trash and start over again. Weird times, friends. :)
- latchkey 3y ago
  If only a million people did that and then someone collected all the trashed printers into a pile. It would make a really interesting art project.
  - lupire 3y ago
    That's what e-cycling is.
    - latchkey 3y ago
      Have you ever tried to e-cycle 1 million printers?
1970-01-01 3y ago
The best ink jets are the kind that take solid ink. Solid ink doesn't go bad in 2 months, and isn't going to leak all over your floor. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_ink#Advantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_ink#Advantages
masteruvpuppetz 3y ago
Has anyone modded the inkjet into a cutter (like cricut)? I'd like to know about any projects because a cutter is quite a lot expensive although it seems like the same tech as an inkjet printer.
- lupire 3y ago
  Printers have extremely tiny tolerances. A cutter wants a bit more distance to fit the blade. Probably not worth the effort vs just buying a cutter.
gattr 3y ago
In Greg Bear's novel "Quantico" terrorists use inkjets to produce their biological weapon's deliverable particles.
ijijijjij 3y ago
You could play music with them too...
- AnthonBerg 3y ago
  Not inkjet music but dot-matrix, and quite beautiful: Man or Astro-Man? - A Simple Text File: https://youtu.be/o0QHY7S-OtU https://youtu.be/o0QHY7S-OtU
scovetta 3y ago
Obligatory "just get a Brother printer" comment. They are the cast iron pans of printing technology, the kind that your kids and grandkids will inherit some day.
- erik_seaberg 3y ago
  Sadly they do drop support for old models in drivers for new OS versions, so I can only print from my aging gaming PC. Maybe network printing solves this but mine is USB-only.
mdaniel 3y ago
by sheer coincidence last night I learned of a thriving community around modding Epson inkjet printers with "continuous ink supply system (CISS)" and (highly sus') firmware patches to turn them into dye sublimation and direct to film transfer prints. The videos said they use Epson because unlike other vendors they don't use heat in their printheads making it safe(?) to run dye sub ink through them (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHWTko3lk5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHWTko3lk5Y )

171 points by sohkamyung 3y ago

It's true! I dropped one out of my 2nd story window onto a hard drive I needed to sanitize, and it did a nice job of it.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
teeray 3y ago
They’re great at cleaning out your wallet too!

Cheer2171 3y ago

> While laser printers do the big printing jobs in commercial settings, the inkjet printer has become the printer most of us use at home and at the office. I don't know who "most of us" is, but I had to check the year it was published because this is so wrong for everyone I know, home or office. Black and white laser printers are price competitive with color inkjet printers in the short and long term for home or small office use. Most people don't need color, or if they do, inkjet is slow and low quality and more expensive than retail print shops for things like photos or full page flyers.

sys_64738 3y ago
I got a couple of laser printers for 50 bucks and when they ran out of ink I just toss them and get another. Inkjet printers are rubbish.
- DaSHacka 3y ago
  Are the inkjet or laser printers rubbish in this scenario? Sounds like you're constantly replacing the laser ones
  - sys_64738 3y ago
    No they’re pretty good but I don’t print much anymore. Dell laser printer is eight years old and still using original toner cartridge.
- lupire 3y ago
  Laser printers don't have ink, and almost never run out of toner, and the toner is cheap. Why on earth would you toss them?
  - sys_64738 3y ago
    Toss is probably the wrong word. Added to the e-Waste pile in my basement.
kstrauser 3y ago
I splurged on a color laser. It's brilliant and cheap for printing color documents. It's also really bad at printing photos. Know what's great for printing photos? The Walgreens up the block. It prints them waaaaayyyy more cheaply and nicely than any inkjet I've ever owned. The 2 times a year I want to frame and hang up a nice photo, I upload it to them and then walk over an hour later to pick it up. There's no plausible reason I'd ever buy an inkjet again.
- lloydatkinson 3y ago
  > It's also really bad at printing photos. Yours in particular or generally laser printers? If the last one, that sounds surprising
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - joecool1029 3y ago
    > If the last one, that sounds surprising Is it? Soho color laser printers are calibrated and designed to print color documents, not photos. They use CMYK (4) colors and inkjets designed for photos use 6 or more. It's possible to do photos with it but generally the laser printers most people have are not really designed for high quality photo (where a cheaper inkjet would be), they will show banding and be less color accurate.
    - lupire 3y ago
      Inkjets use 6 colors? I've never seen that at consumer retail. I see 3 color plus black.
      - joecool1029 3y ago
        They can, yes. Here's a HP doc on 5 color ones with photo cartridge that are fairly common: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01839024 https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01839024 Light cyan and light magenta are usually the additional colors added https://www.macworld.com/article/152010/6inkhetprinters.html https://www.macworld.com/article/152010/6inkhetprinters.html There are 7 color printers from Epson that add a dilute black.
tombert 3y ago
Yeah, I sort of swore a blood oath that I would never buy another ink jet printer 10 years ago because one of my color cartridges dried up, and it wouldn't let me even print black and white, despite the fact that the black and white cartridge appeared to be fine. Replacing the color cartridge was like $70. Instead of fixing this problem, I threw the ink jet away, and found a used Samsung ML-2010 on ebay for $60. It prints documents just fine, the only things I ever bother printing are forms that I have to sign. Now I have a 15 year old HP office printer, also only black and white, and I genuinely like it. If I ever need to print color for whatever reason, I'll walk to one of the print shops a few blocks from me. It's not worth keeping a full color printer in my house that will work exactly once.
- II2II 3y ago
  After avoiding inkjet printers for some 30 years, I purchased a colour inkjet printer after comparing the cost per page to a colour laser. Granted, I went for a tank based (rather than cartridge based) printer. Will I be happy with the decision 10 years down the road (which is the age of my current laser printer)? I have no idea. But the point is that you can avoid the cartridge based inkjets and get something where you refill the colours according to your needs. I also suspect that some of the applications mentioned in the article aren't using the built-to-a-price-point inkjet printers. Quality varies. Sometimes you have to check the reviews and pay a bit more for that quality.
  - tombert 3y ago
    Which model did you get?
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      I don't know if this is what they purchased, but EcoTank is a good term to search for if you want an inkjet that won't charge you an arm and a leg for proprietary cartridges. The basic idea is that instead of swappable cartridges, they just have ink tanks that you top up from a squirt bottle. These bottles are cheaper than any cartridge while containing like ten times the amount of ink.
lmm 3y ago
If you just want to occasionally print out concert tickets / photocopy id documents / etc., half-assing it by getting a that only does black and white is the worst of both worlds - better to either save the space by not owning a printer at all, or avoid ever having to go to a print shop by having a printer that can do colour when you need it. If you're actually printing out a lot of documents then yeah laser makes sense, but I've never understood the HN home laser dogma.
- tverbeure 3y ago
  I almost never print, but when I do I don't want to struggle with an inkjet printer that has dried up nozzles. A $140 Brother laser printer will pretty much work for the rest of your life.
  - Liftyee 3y ago
    This anecdotally holds up, at least for Brother laser printers made in the 2010's. Over a decade later it's still working perfectly. Granted I do have to nudge a mechanical part back into place every year, but the service manual is so good that maintenance is near-trivial.
  - lmm 3y ago
    I've been using inkjets for decades and never had this "dried up nozzles" problem, shrug.
    - lupire 3y ago
      Do you print at least weekly?
      - lmm 3y ago
        No. I print when I need to, and there have been stretches of at least several months when I haven't printed anything.
- xmprt 3y ago
CharlesW 3y ago
> I don't know who "most of us" is… Meaning, ~75% of us (see pages 14-16): https://o1.rtcdn.net/uploads/2022/04/Issue123EN2205-V4.pdf https://o1.rtcdn.net/uploads/2022/04/Issue123EN2205-V4.pdf
- lupire 3y ago
  The article says that 75% of pages printed in home/office desktop is laser (the blue segment of the pie). I suspect most of us printer owners own inkjets, but people who print a lot of pages use laser, while inkjets are decorative after terrible experience with the first cartridge.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    > The article says that 75% of pages printed in home/office desktop is laser (the blue segment of the pie). Thank you, you're right — this supports the parent commenter's point for the combined business and home markets. I wasn't able to find any data on the breakdown for the home market specifically, but based on my social circle I'd guess COVID/remote work significantly increased home laser purchases. > …while inkjets are decorative after terrible experience with the first cartridge. Having bought an inkjet after a two-decade "only laser/LED" rule, tank/CISS ink is making inkjets nice again. Still, I wouldn't recommend an inkjet if you (1) never intend to print photos/images or (2) regularly go more than a month without printing.

malfist 3y ago

It starts out claiming that 1980s offices were more noisy than today, but I don't know that that is true. We don't even have cubicles anymore. You're lucky if your team and seven others aren't sharing the same conference table "open office" space.

II2II 3y ago
Those old hammer printers were loud. Commercial printers were often housed in cases with sound-deadening materials, even though they usually occupied a room dedicated to computers (with the offices having terminals). Workers in smaller offices and personal computer users often had to put up with the relatively loud high-pitched drone of dot-matrix printers, though some would get enclosures to deaden the sound. Even if open offices somehow manage to be louder, it is an entirely different quality of noise.
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  I interned at a stodgy 80s-style company in the 90s (I'm sure the office was exactly the same as the decade before). It was nice actually, compared to my "modern" office. The printers and copiers were in different places so they generally weren't bothersome if you were at your desk. The main noise annoyances were 1) telephones ringing sometimes--those old phones were loud, and 2) neighboring workers talking. They didn't have separate cubicles, but rather cubicle walls were used to separate workgroups from each other. I guess 3) computer keyboards were noisy back then, but at this place most workers didn't have computers at their desks yet. Peak quietness for offices was, in my experience, in the late 90s or early 2000s. Everyone had separate cubicles with sound-absorbing walls. I really miss those days. Of course, everyone's experiences will be different. Different companies had different office layouts, though there definitely have been clear trends.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    Offices at the office. With walls, and doors that shut, and sometimes even windows that opened. They were relatively easy to find up until the late 90s when I stopped "going in"; maybe if people want to fill their expensive commercial real estate you all can convince the suits to bring them back?

kazinator 3y ago

That's all nice; it's still incredibly stupid to buy consumer inkjets for home or office use. They are garbage. Inkjets produce nicer pictures than toner-based printers (LED, Laser) at great expense and hassle. You're better off using an online service for bulk printing of pictures. For document printing, they completely lose to toner-based. They are slow. They have to be used regularly or they dry up, which is a hassle to fix and perhaps cannot be. I can ignore my LED printer for weeks or months, and be confident that when I need to count on it to print something, it will print. Also, to begin with, inkjet cartridges are tiny compared to toner, and most of the content is the liquid carrier. Toner is 100% solids, and the cartridges are much larger.

CharlesW 3y ago
> Inkjets produce nicer pictures than toner-based printers (LED, Laser) at great expense and hassle. Tank-based printers have changed this equation a lot, FWIW. I haven't seen a cartridge-based printer that I'd recommend.
- kazinator 3y ago
  I see. Right; I'm vaguely aware of those things through passive exposure to ads. I've mostly written off inkjets, so my attention has been minimal. Refillable, big tanks do make a difference. If that's the deal breaker for someone, they may be worth another look.

BMc2020 3y ago

Basically if it's a liquid you can inkjet it. (basically each nozzle has a chamber with a tube leading into it and a hole in the top. A resistor heater boils the drop and it spits out the hole). I always wondered if anyone ever tried to make a fuel injector out of one. (the finer the mist you can make your gasoline, the better it combusts). Source: I looked at thousands of these things under a microscope at a company that makes lots of them. 0/10 would not recommend.

samstave 3y ago
I wonder if you could make a really good fuel injected motor utilizing these for RC/Drone engines. An RC/drone I think that would be neat would be a 'diesel electric' (not diesel) - but a motor utilizing this for injecting into a generator for a gas-electric helicopter. Like a Chinook where the interior is the gas-electric generator, but the overall design modeled after the Chinook given that its the Heavy Lifter of Helos with a payload lift capacity of ~20 tons.? -- In the late 1990s I worked at a company who manufactured a lot of the physical media for various software/games/OS (Intuit/Everquest/SunOS for example) We manufatered the CDs, copy, manuals, boxes, etc - boxed and shipped it... All the CDs were printed using Brother inkjets. My buddy was a fairly famous DJ in the rave scene in the 90s - so in my off hours we would make and print his CDs... dj morgan... I designed and printed these logos onto CDs in the 90s https://i.imgur.com/6VUWeQN.png https://i.imgur.com/6VUWeQN.png (I actually designed the Decepticon Logo in circuitry when I worked at Intel - but we lost the artwork, and that was the cover - the CD was printed with the logo as drawn in circuit traces and was pretty bad ass for the 90s scene...)
simne 3y ago
For engine injector need high pressure. In automobile direct injector used 20 layers of piezoelectric plates to achieve this, and sure, high voltage applied.
- regularfry 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure I've come across piezos on inkjet printers too. Can't remember the make, but resistive heating is only one way to get the ink to go splat.

qq66 3y ago

Also, products like Irrigreen (https://irrigreen.com/ https://irrigreen.com/) which uses inkjet technology to “print” an exact pattern of water onto a lawn, avoiding sprinkler overlap. (Note: am investor)

lagniappe 3y ago
Outside of states with high water usage cost, what is the pitch for Irrigreen?
- nine_k 3y ago
  The few states with high cost of water, like California or Texas, can be enough of a market. BTW since they have basically a positioned spray technology, they could literally "print" things with grass, giving it different nutrients or even dispersing different seeds. Anything from a decorative striped pattern to signs of affiliation and slogans.
getwiththeprog 3y ago
That is a great idea. But does it really use "inkjet" technology? It looks like an adjustable rate pump with a timing or orientation chip, mapped with an app.
bigbillheck 3y ago
https://www.crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com/kill-your-lawn https://www.crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com/kill-your-lawn
- memcg 3y ago
  Thank you! I'm on Step 3. KILL THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR LAWN 8 truckloads of free wood chips, free cardboard from Costco and Craigslist. Free coffee grounds, roasting chaff and burlap bags from a local coffee roaster.

ay 3y ago

I don’t know if both authors being affiliated with HP Labs is a coincidence or a sign of a conflict of interest… But the article kinda reads like a desperate last-ditch promo for the inkjets. I haven’t had an inkjet for 30 years - only black and white lasers. Starting with HL LaserJet 5L in 2000, then Samsung and now Brother (yay for their nice platform independence so they work on Linux). My Prusa 3D is also arguably spewing a material into a surface so I guess yeah, maybe I should count it as an inkjet as well, though ;-)

Liftyee 3y ago
With all the anti-consumer DRM shenanigans HP is trying these days (see: Instant Ink), I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
- mikepurvis 3y ago
  Ugh, yeah my household has an instant ink subscription and it’s such an obvious scam.
jmspring 3y ago
HP Labs != HP corporate
- canadianfella 3y ago
  [dead]
- hughesjj 3y ago
  Hp labs \subset HP corporate
- jmspring 3y ago
  Researchers have different priorities to what corporate does.
albru123 3y ago
Seems like the point of this article missed a lot of people entirely, since they are so fixated on consumer inkjet printers. That's a very specific case of inkjet printing, but inkjet technology is way more than that. For example continuous inkjet printers are used to label packages of many items you buy every day. There's also research about inkjet printing wearable electronics etc. None of which has a lot to do with HP.

Liftyee 3y ago

Home inkjet printers are only ideal for a niche usecase where you print lots of photos regularly (to the point where you need your own printer over a photo printing service). Their only advantage over laser printers is higher image quality. If you don't print frequently, the ink nozzles clog up (and you inevitably use a bunch of ink trying to fix them). For infrequent document printing, a laser printer will Just Print whether it's been sitting unused for an hour or a month. If you occasionally need some photos printed, using one of the myriad services will be better than replacing the inevitably gunked up ink cartridges. If you print a lot of documents, the laser printer easily outstrips the speed of an inkjet. You'll also run up huge ink fees since the cost per page of ink tends to be higher than toner. Therefore, the only reason you should get an inkjet printer is if you often need high quality colour prints (photos).

merry_flame 3y ago
As others have noted, some printers (for instance Epson EcoTank) have printing costs that are pretty much on par with laser printers and almost no clogging issues. People usually don't take into account energy costs when buying laser printers (toner is typically kept warm from instant, no-preheating printing) and, crucially, laser printers are terrible for indoor air quality. I therefore reached the opposite conclusion as you…
ptero 3y ago
I think the "occasional printing will clog up nozzles" affects some printer models more than the others. As a single data point, I used a Canon i9990 for many years. It had a very irregular use -- I would print a few 13x19 photos or a tiled panorama, or an occasional school picture of kids for the relatives. Then it would sit unused for days to months until the next job. And even with this supposedly abusive cycle it ran like new until it completely died one day. I personally had worse luck with image printing services. Maybe the machines are off, maybe the fellow who runs it does not care, but more often than not there is something subtly wrong: either the color is off, or there is a smudge at the edge or some minor artifact. My 2c.
treflop 3y ago
You’re posting on an article about other things inkjet is used for and then you say the only thing you need a home inkjet printer for is for photos? ???? Photos is the last thing I’d buy an inkjet printer for. I’d be using a home inkjet to make circuit boards, temporary shirts, screen printing masks, transparencies, stickers, etc.

russelg 3y ago

That full-colour 3D printer from Mikami they mention is quite awesome, with an eye-watering price! https://www.mimakiusa.com/products/3d/3duj-553/ https://www.mimakiusa.com/products/3d/3duj-553/

ninju 3y ago
Here's a video of a Mimaki printer at the Formnext conference 3D Printing with 10,000,000 colors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IkvzMJihuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IkvzMJihuY
tdudhhu 3y ago
I expected a much higher price. While $190000 is steep it doesn't seem that much for such printer. For example: Nexa3D ships SLS printers for over $500000
- devsda 3y ago
  Before someone thinks it costs just $190 for a color 3d printer, its ~ $190K. TIL that some countries use comma and a period for separating numbers and decimals respectively and some other countries use them the other way around.
  - chgs 3y ago
    And some counties group numbers in twos rather than threes - 1,23,45,678.90 International standard is space for separators - 1 000 000. That’s a pain on a phone.
    - isametry 3y ago
      Figure space to be specific (U+2007 or &numsp). A plain space like in your million will break across lines. (And yes, that’s even more of a pain on a phone.)

Donaldwide 3y ago

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anymouse123456 3y ago

I bought my Brother color laser printer 12 years ago in a fit of HP inkjet induced rage. It just runs and runs and runs. I've bought a couple more for around the office and recommend them every time the subject of printers comes up. If you don't want GBs of bullshit malware pretending at being drivers, you're sick of the color ink shenanigans, and you want a printer that wakes up and prints every single time, get a Brother Laser printer. They're amazing. No affiliation, just a super grateful customer.

cbozeman 3y ago
And the sad part now is that HP Color LaserJets are hampered by such godawful software and design that I wish I had bought a Brother color laser printer. I will never make that mistake again. I have a beautiful HP Color LaserJet MFP 4301dfw that constantly loses connection to the WiFi access point and requires a reboot and/or logging into the incredibly shitty HP Smart software. I really wish HP had enterprise-grade or at least prosumer software instead of this fucking awful consumer shit. A $599 printer should have a solid software stack, and HP even markets it to small office consumers. The machine has a beautifully designed exterior and solid internals that are plagued with an absolute shit software stack. Bill Hewlett and David Packard are probably rolling over in their grave at how fucking far their laser printer division has fallen.
- anymouse123456 3y ago
  Indeed about the founders. I'm sorry to hear you were fleeced. I highly recommend taking that monster out back and recreating our favorite scene from Office Space. HP was once a great company that innovated and made incredible technology. It was taken over by financial types in the late nineties. They sold off the test equipment core business and leaned into cost cutting. They excised any vestiges of integrity or quality wherever it could be found.
- chrisfinazzo 3y ago
  Ethernet. Do that thing. With regard to software, I've long since accepted that HP, Brother, Canon et al can't write drivers to save their lives - and shouldn't have to - in a world where AirPrint, Chrome OS Printing, Windows IPP, or Direct IP printing exist. It's long past time for printing to be treated as an OS service, where 3rd parties write the smallest possible shim to plug into available devices.

xarope 3y ago

I used to think I needed an inkjet, but I switched to a brother laser B/W printer years ago (mainly because of the linux compatibility), and in that time, I've only wished to print a color photo ... oh wait, never!

pbj1968 3y ago

I bought some HP printer last year for $75. A couple bucks on popular auction site got me a coupon code that gave me like 16 months of free ink. Several reams of free paper. The printer experience itself is horrible. I’m constantly having to reboot it, it cannot maintain a WiFi connection, they have crippled usb on it, etc. Reviews back me up, it’s a common experience. However, it makes beautiful prints. I have printed literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages of full color. And HP dutifully sends me another cartridge without prompting. Just a couple weeks left on that trial. And the plan? Chunk it in the trash and start over again. Weird times, friends. :)

latchkey 3y ago
If only a million people did that and then someone collected all the trashed printers into a pile. It would make a really interesting art project.
- lupire 3y ago
  That's what e-cycling is.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    Have you ever tried to e-cycle 1 million printers?

1970-01-01 3y ago

The best ink jets are the kind that take solid ink. Solid ink doesn't go bad in 2 months, and isn't going to leak all over your floor. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_ink#Advantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_ink#Advantages

masteruvpuppetz 3y ago

Has anyone modded the inkjet into a cutter (like cricut)? I'd like to know about any projects because a cutter is quite a lot expensive although it seems like the same tech as an inkjet printer.

lupire 3y ago
Printers have extremely tiny tolerances. A cutter wants a bit more distance to fit the blade. Probably not worth the effort vs just buying a cutter.

gattr 3y ago

In Greg Bear's novel "Quantico" terrorists use inkjets to produce their biological weapon's deliverable particles.

ijijijjij 3y ago

You could play music with them too...

AnthonBerg 3y ago
Not inkjet music but dot-matrix, and quite beautiful: Man or Astro-Man? - A Simple Text File: https://youtu.be/o0QHY7S-OtU https://youtu.be/o0QHY7S-OtU

scovetta 3y ago

Obligatory "just get a Brother printer" comment. They are the cast iron pans of printing technology, the kind that your kids and grandkids will inherit some day.

erik_seaberg 3y ago
Sadly they do drop support for old models in drivers for new OS versions, so I can only print from my aging gaming PC. Maybe network printing solves this but mine is USB-only.

mdaniel 3y ago

by sheer coincidence last night I learned of a thriving community around modding Epson inkjet printers with "continuous ink supply system (CISS)" and (highly sus') firmware patches to turn them into dye sublimation and direct to film transfer prints. The videos said they use Epson because unlike other vendors they don't use heat in their printheads making it safe(?) to run dye sub ink through them (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHWTko3lk5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHWTko3lk5Y )