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Inkjet printer with DRM-free ink will be launched via a crowdfunding campaign
- robtherobber 1y agoThis is great. I'm surprised it hasn't happened earlier.
- tonfreed 1y agoPatents around printing are out of control. All the major manufacturers cross license everything from each other
- hackernewds 1y agospecifically since enterprises are easier to monopolize since the purchasers are not users. and they need carteling to maintain dominance over a product so simple
- charcircuit 1y agoHow is printing simple?
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoI dunno about simple, but it is >30 years old; it seems a little odd that nobody's managed to get an Open version working.
- abdullahkhalids 1y agoSo how are these people working around patents?
- bluGill 1y agoPrintes have been around for decades. All the major innovation are patent expired. There may be useful new things under protection but nothing critical.
- knowitnone3 1y agolike inkjet expiration chips
- caminanteblanco 1y agoHere's the crowdfunding link: https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer It wasn't obvious from the article, but the printer also supports 11" wide paper rolls for us American users. Honestly, beyond just the openness, the small form factor also looks really compelling.
- microtherion 1y agoI would hope that the "27mm" in the article were a typo (it would translate to 1" paper). Edit: The project description does indeed state 27mm as one of the supported formats (A4 and A3 width are also supported). Seems an odd choice to me, but there may be a market there I don't know about.
- javawizard 1y agoI'm pretty sure they meant 27cm, or 270mm. Or perhaps they meant 297mm - the exact height of a sheet of A4 - and mistyped the "9".
- xp84 1y ago11" wide? So it'll print an 8.5x11 sideways?
- dioxis 1y agoMy HP 1022n is still kicking after 20 years, with zero maintenance. With laserjets, you don't have to worry about the ink drying.
- xp84 1y agoNice. That one is definitely a workhorse. Dirt cheap toner, too. I began my career in IT at a small business, and I deployed one of those for a very high volume location, waaaay above its supposed lightweight duty cycle. I recall it as being incredibly fast and low-maintenance. At home I've had 3 HP lasers in my life, all acquired for cheap or free. A LaserJet 2100N - owned this for 10 years after getting it for free from a closing store (it was their office printer, it only perished because I did a bad job replacing the dried-out rubber rollers. Printed multiple reams of paper with it and never even replaced the toner. A LaserJet P2055dn - like $100 shipped on ebay? owned this for about 7 years, printed at least a dozen reams. It still worked when I gave it to Goodwill to replace it with an all-in-one when an inkjet AIO we used for scanning died. A LaserJet M227fdn - Acquired with 200 pages on it for $30 at Goodwill. No issues as I assume this will probably last a decade. Moral of the story: Laserjets - and especially monochrome ones if that fits into your lifestyle - basically last forever and print for far less than the paper costs.
- hypercube33 1y agoI had a LaserJet III my dad got before I was born in the 1980s and it still worked when I got rid of it, even on Windows 10. PCL4 generic drivers worked just fine as well (they work on anything I'm pretty sure) and toner was $15 it just was gigantic and felt like it was going to blow the breaker when it printed
- xp84 1y agoI remember one like that in the break room of a big retail store I worked at in the ‘00s, that everyone needed to use to print their weekly shift schedules with (and presumably had been there since 1990 or so). I’m sure it lasted another decade after I left!
- exabrial 1y agoDoes it print the tracking dots?
- schoen 1y agoIn my research on tracking dots, we only ever saw them produced by laser printers (and some more obscure professional processes), not inkjet printers. It appears that the governments' pressure on printer manufacturers over this was focused on color laser printers and not color inkjets. We have still not, as far as I know, learned what the governments threatened the manufacturers with or what they offered to them in order to get them to cooperate.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 1y agoI find that rather surprising, given the claim that the goal is preventing counterfeiting - wouldn't only inkjet printers have a chance of producing an even remotely credible counterfeit? Laser printer printouts that I saw looked incredibly glossy.
- 0x457 1y agoLaser printers absolutely could have produced "close enough" counterfeit of some currencies...like 10 years ago. Reasons why it's laser and not inkjet: - Crisp edges on fine details - Consistent colors - Consistent alignment Remeber, we're talking about "EURion constellation" that was in use at least since 1996. Also, remeber we're talking about regular consumer printers: consumer laser printers > consumer inkjet. I guess also remember that not ever banknote is a US dolar?
- schoen 1y ago> Remeber, we're talking about "EURion constellation" that was in use at least since 1996. That's a different measure! It's detected by some software in photocopiers or software used in conjunction with scanners, not produced by printers. The other reason I had thought why inkjets were considered a lesser concern for counterfeiting is that the documents they produce will traditionally smear if they get wet, which doesn't seem like a very desirable property in counterfeit currency and documents. Maybe over time they've tended to use more permanent inks, though.
- pabs3 1y agoThe license isn't Open Source Definition compliant.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Liftyee 1y agoFinally, someone made a printer. I was always thinking about this, what with the hidden codes and the government-mandated "features" in commercial printers. I know that many are intended to prevent counterfeiting, but I think it's about the principle and the hacker spirit to have something fully under your control and understanding.
- donw 1y agoI'd love to see open-source firmware / hardware that can slot into existing inkjet or laser printers, if only to remove the tracking dots added by all printers since the mid-to-late 2000s, but also because I'm sure the hardware is more capable than the existing firmware allows.
- marcodiego 1y agoIs it RYF-capable?
- jamiek88 1y agoIs this real or a concept / kickstarter type thing? It does look fantastic but I fear vaporware.
- FinnKuhn 1y agoSame thinking here. The renders look nice, but why not share a video of it working - unless it doesn't work yet...
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agohttps://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer > Open Source > Open Printer will use the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license for all of its files, including electronics and mechanical design files, firmware code, and the bill of materials. We hope that people will be able to repair, upgrade, and contribute improvements to their printers. It's a nice hope, but they've conveniently banned being able to pay someone else to make parts for you, which will make it harder. Also, not Open Source. (Shared Source is still better than proprietary, but it's not F/OSS.)
- slow_typist 1y agoIn my understanding it should be fine to make parts to order and charge for that, but I may be wrong. What definitely isn’t covered is making parts in advance (anonymously) and sell them later with a profit.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoOkay, but as someone who would have wanted to buy parts, that's a downside.
- slow_typist 1y agoAbsolutely
- terribleperson 1y agoWhile I think NC is a terrible license, hasn't it been settled in court that you can hire someone to produce CC-BY-NC material? You can't run a business selling the material, but you can be hired to produce it.
- goda90 1y agoSo what workarounds could be had? Contractor business where you hire someone for a few hours to make it for you? Business that sells something else at an elevated price but gives a CC-BY-NC material gift with every purchase?
- mrsssnake 1y agoSelling any parts or upgrades by third parties will be heavily limited by the BY-NC-SA 4.0. You could not build the printer and use it in a small company office. The non-commercial clause is not only unnecessary (who is going to mass market it?), but license also means firmware is proprietary software, it absolutely is not Open Source. Sad to see even seemingly user approached projects building on foundations they misuse the terms of.
- slow_typist 1y agoOf course you could use the printer commercially. You mustn’t sell it. Using the printer is not sharing it’s design.
- pessimizer 1y agoIt's horrible and useless. An "open source" printer should allow someone to open a factory and mass produce them. I shouldn't have a dependency on the designer on something marketed as open source. That's no different than normal. You could never reasonably prevent people from making one-offs anyway, not that it's cost-efficient, or would ever be worth doing. Attribution license it. Name it TheOpenPrinter@Patreon.com and force manufacturers to engrave it on each one. Don't pull nonsense. Crowdfunding imo sounds like they're planning to be unsuccessful at actually making them, and just to make a living off failing to make them for a year or two. How about just getting the design tight, modular, and small-shop ready, and not even attempting to mass produce them? Leave that to the experts.
- october8140 1y agoBrother Printers for people who want DRM free ink. Just a big ink well.
- knowitnone3 1y agoI wouldn't buy anything from Brother. Their website is Ugly, search has never works properly, printer is thin plastic flimsy, cartridges also thin flimsy plastic. Even downloading their software is horrible!
- rand846633 1y agoOnce plugged in, the brother printer under Debian just works. Why even Visite the website?
- maratc 1y agoThat's also the user experience on Mac OS and iOS. No drivers needed, just connect it to the WiFi once (using the buttons on the device) and it just works.
- rmunn 1y agoCanon also makes a line of printers with refillable ink tanks, no chip involved. I've owned one for a couple years now, and I helped my father set one up about three months ago. Rough back-of-the-envelope math suggests a cost of 1-2 cents per page if you're printing in color, less than that if you only print black & white. (The black ink bottle costs the same as the color bottles but is larger). Epson also makes ink tank printers, but I don't recommend them because the Epson I used to own refused to work until the "maintenance cartridge" (a special sponge that absorbs the ink used to flush out clogs) was replaced, and it's not user-serviceable. (Technically you could do it but you'd void your warranty). So when my Epson died, I replaced it with a comparable Canon printer. Canon will sell you a maintenance cartridge for about $10 (plus tax and shipping) right on their website, and I'm sure some retailers would carry them too (though I haven't looked). I haven't needed it yet, but it's good to know I won't have to buy a new printer because I couldn't replace a simple sponge buried deep in its guts.
- Johnny555 1y agoI print so little these days that any inkjet printer is not cost effective due to the amount of ink it goes through to keep the heads unclogged, and I still have had to manually clean the clogged heads sometimes. Now I have a cheap Brother laser printer for those few times I need to print something. It's over 5 years old, prints around a dozen or two pages a year and works fine every time I turn it on. (Hopefully some day I won't need a printer at all, but sometimes it comes in handy, like when I needed to update my property tax records, my choices were either to go in to the office or mail them a signed paper form -- scanned or faxed forms were not permitted)
- busymom0 1y agoSame here. I bought a brother laser printer probably 10 years ago and it's been working perfectly since then. Was able to buy a pack of 3 third party toners (is that what it's called?) from Amazon few years ago and it's still going.
- jamiek88 1y agoSame! I had to print something at home for the first time in 4 years before recent travel and I had mine in the shed. Plugged it in, printed no problem. Those old brother lasers were the pinnacle of printer tech. Sadly even brother has been enshittified now.
- IshKebab 1y agoI mean I bought an Inkjet printer 10 years ago and it worked all that time. I replaced the ink cartridges once. I have had to replace it finally because it got an issue where it kept thinking the paper was jammed or empty (it wouldn't tell me which) even when it wasn't. But that isn't anything to do with inkjet Vs laser. I did replace it with a Brother laser printer simply because it was very cheap (and I don't need colour). Annoyingly the Brother app uses the old temporary AP WiFi pairing method which doesn't at all work on modern Android because it constantly detects no internet access and disconnects no matter what you do. So instead I had to tediously enter my WiFi password using up and down arrows and a 30 character display. Like 01234567890abcd next 01234567890abcdefghij next 0123... Seriously tedious but it's lucky they had the option otherwise I'd have had to return it.
- jdietrich 1y agoHP, Canon and Epson all sell printers that use bulk ink - no cartridges, just bottles that you pour into the printer's reservoir. The handles-and-blades business model that is implicit when you buy a $40 printer is still utterly miserable, but it's no longer the only option. If you're willing to spend $200, you get a reliable piece of equipment that isn't constantly trying to nickel-and-dime you.
- harrall 1y agoYeah if you can’t justify a >$200 inkjet, you may not need an inkjet. Order photos from a store instead of printing them. Get a laserjet if you just want document printing at home. If you are doing crafts, then buy a nice inkjet. The nice inkjets pay for themselves past some volume because (1) OEM ink is actually relatively cheap and (2) they are reliable.
- arresin 1y agoThe issue with laser jets is the microplastic pollution
- throwzasdf 1y ago[dead]
- dangus 1y agoI personally think inkjet has superior richer color printing to laser jet even for basic use like printing out websites and recipes, and it also doesn’t take up a massive amount of space and weight like a laser printer. I also don’t like the power spike that laser printers do that flickers the lights. Plus, a lot of inkjet buyers really need the scanning and copying functionality more than the printer itself. I have a ~$200 HP OfficeJet printer it’s small, has all the multi-functions I need, and has been reliable. Yes, the ink isn’t cheap. But I buy it at Costco which makes it less painful and it’s not the 1990s so printing isn’t an everyday thing. I have never had an issue with ink drying up or anything like that. I think the thing you have to understand is that customers like me are not looking for the best dollars per page, they’re just looking for something convenient so that they don’t have to print at work or go to the library. They don’t want to buy a serious appliance that can’t be lifted by a large portion of the population.
- jeffgreco 1y agoLove it though the way cut sheets of rolled paper will curl is pretty annoying.
- knowitnone3 1y agoThis is nice and all but I live in a college town and I can get at a minimum 10 free printers per year. Printer companies don't make money on the printer, it's the ink that makes them money.
- tdeck 1y agoIt looks like if you want to print on sheets of paper you need to feed them one at a time, which is pretty inconvenient. Having a proper paper tray is pretty much a requirement for being a practical printer these days.
- ranie93 1y agoSeems like it has a cutter: >There's an integrated cutter that'll cut the roll into A4 size, but if you have a longer format printing job like a banner, then that's possible too.
- tdeck 1y agoRoll paper isn't really an acceptable compromise these days though. In addition to being curled, if you need to print more than a couple of pages you're left with a disorganized mess.
- culi 1y agoFor the first ever open-sourced printer I think it's a great starting point. Being an open-sourced project, community-made solutions for other feeders are sure to come if this succeeds
- tcdent 1y agoWait, I thought the hangup of consumer printers was ink, not the printer itself.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoI'm reasonably sure that it's the printer that's the problem, even when dealing with ink. There have been 3rd parties that are happy to sell you the ink for forever, but the manufacturers make the printer block unofficial refills.
- culi 1y agoYup. Bulk printer ink is incredibly cheap. The most expensive part of ink cartridges are the chips they add to lock you in with DRM
- throwzasdf 1y ago[dead]
- opengrass 1y agotracking dots? 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...
- throwawayk7h 1y agoDo not make this NC licensed. I would like to be able to buy one of these.
- tim-- 1y agoWhy does the printer design being NC licensed mean that you won't be able to purchase one? To me, it seems like this license makes the most sense for everyone. The designer(s) of the printer get to sell a printer that no doubt took more than a few days worth of work to go from idea to "hey look, it prints something", and everyone else gets to see how the design works, to either improve, or create a new design based on learnings from this project. Hopefully that brand new design is licensed more liberally! But I sure as hell would love an open printer that has a less than ideal license, especially when the alternative is basically getting a new printer from one of four companies (Canon, Epson, HP... did I miss anyone?) The world needs more open source hardware. I'm currently trying to tackle an open source washing machine and heat pump dryer in my spare time. Will it ever turn into a built project? Probably not, but I sure as hell want to make sure that every peice that I've worked on so far is released to the world if it means that the next few people can finish or fix the design. The fact that we see __washing machines__ as something that's not worth supporting after 6 years is honestly disgusting to me. It's not a flat screen TV, I don't see the design of a washing machine improving radically in my generation. But if it does, it should be able to be retrofitted, rather than replacing an entire machine.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago> Why does the printer design being NC licensed mean that you won't be able to purchase one? > To me, it seems like this license makes the most sense for everyone. The designer(s) of the printer get to sell a printer that no doubt took more than a few days worth of work to go from idea to "hey look, it prints something", and everyone else gets to see how the design works, to either improve, or create a new design based on learnings from this project. Hopefully that brand new design is licensed more liberally! Let's consider a hypothetical. It might not happen, but I'd bet that it does. The project launches. They get funded. They successfully ship the hardware. Once. And then... oh, it doesn't matter. They retire. They disappear. They get hit by a bus. They want to do another run but funding falls through. They try to do another run but there are manufacturing problems and after a couple years everyone gives up. Heck, maybe they get bought by $EVIL_MAINSTREAM_PRINTER_MANUFACTURER to kill this competition. It really doesn't matter how, what matters is that if anything happens to this one group of 3 people, nobody's allowed to sell this thing ever again, which means the only way to get new parts, let alone a whole replacement machine, is to personally have enough DIY skill to make it yourself. And that's too high a bar. They're coming at it from the software side, but the FSF articulates it pretty well: > Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important. Paid, professional support for free software fills an important need. > Thus, to exclude commercial use, commercial development or commercial distribution would hobble the free software community and obstruct its path to success. - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#selling https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#selling > But I sure as hell would love an open printer that has a less than ideal license, especially when the alternative is basically getting a new printer from one of four companies (Canon, Epson, HP... did I miss anyone?) Yes, Source Available is better than nothing, but it's strictly worse than Open Source.
- esafak 1y agoAbout twenty years too late; inkjets came and went.
- thomascountz 1y agoWhat an unexpectedly stunning design!
- Luker88 1y agoReally nice! > Power via DC jack ...Can I urge the devs to go to USB-C? I know this will complicate power delivery, but wasn't this a requirement for many devices in EU? This is one of those projects that half of developers would want to make, and nobody starts.
- NaomiLehman 1y agoprinters can peak at over 1kW when starting printing (heat up)
- queenss90 1y ago[flagged]
- numpad0 1y ago> while it uses the popular HP 63 cartridges, These old HP "cartridges" were more of hotends with integral extruders. Which means they can be installed onto a printer equivalent of Prusa i3 to turn it into a printer. For a truly open printer, we'd need an open inkjet head - and those are actually made in lithography process, believe it or not.
- ACCount37 1y agoAs long as the cartridges remain available and affordable, I don't see that much of an issue. None of the ICs in the control boards are "open source" either. Currently, the cartridges are available and affordable - with multiple aftermarket suppliers. Some of which even split the "print head" and the "cartridge" into two separate parts, or leave ports for refilling them. An open inkjet head would sure be fun to play around with, but it's not a hard requirement.
- __jonas 1y agoThat sounds really useful, seems like a fun component for a DIY project if they are cheap
- qiine 1y ago'lithography process' dam what is not at this point haha
- pkphilip 1y agoI hope this project makes it big EVEN IF the hardware is not as open as we would like it to be. I am done with the price gouging and the other practices of companies like HP. I hope this company gets big enough and starts licensing its technology to other manufacturers.
- smashah 1y agodoes this printer still print those printer-identifying invisible dots?
- esskay 1y agoBit wary about this. Theres no videos of it ever running, and even the specs cant list basics like print speed. This is vapourware with a terrible license, not to mention likely violates one of the thousands of patents printer manufacturers have, and taking funds for it makes it a commercial venture meaning someones probably about to be sued.
- ricudis 1y agoThis means that now we can build our own custom sadistic printer behavior firmware?
- dotancohen 1y agoYou mean, capable of photocopying currency? The firmware could ignore the EURion Constellation and other such security patterns?
- dangus 1y agoMore than the license issues, the real dealbreaker of this printer is the reel fill mechanism. A printer without a normal paper tray and duplex printing is a dealbreaker. This thing can’t print envelopes, can’t print labels, etc.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoIt's not officially a printer until it's running DOOM at 1-2 FPS.
- falcor84 1y agoDOOM on the printer's display is a cop-out, I want my printer to be fast enough to actually print each frame fast enough to be playable.
- dbg31415 1y agoOut of curiosity, why are they doing toilet paper roll style paper? Wouldn’t it be easier to spread adoption by using just standard printer paper?
- fxtentacle 1y agoI find it VERY weird that there's no mention of https://hackaday.io/project/176931-hp-printer-cartridge-control-module/details https://hackaday.io/project/176931-hp-printer-cartridge-cont... which is a CUPS-based 2D inkjet printer using the exact same print head and open source software and CERN license open hardware. Most likely, that's also precisely the reason why this product uses a very old HP print-head. (The one from HP DeskJet 1110, released December 2014.) Because that one has been reverse-engineered already: https://spritesmods.com/?art=magicbrush&page=3 https://spritesmods.com/?art=magicbrush&page=3
- fellowmartian 1y agoBecause it’s not a printer? It’s a cartridge control module you can install on your 3d printer.
- dang 1y agoThis printer unfortunately doesn't exist yet, and the article is an announcement of an announcement (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22announcement%20of%20an%20announcement%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), so we changed the title to a more representative sentence from the text.
- mkagenius 1y agoWas wondering about the cost (since they haven't announced it) and asked cgpt[1] to guess from the picture. It says around $80-$130. Not bad? 1. https://chatgpt.com/share/68e16867-9520-8010-8eec-6464481195d9 https://chatgpt.com/share/68e16867-9520-8010-8eec-6464481195...
- dsga1 1y agoplease.. please... x3. ADD tray option so we can ditch the paper roll (barf).
- dsga1 1y agoPlease... Please... Please. add option for TRAY and no roll of paper!!