specifically since enterprises are easier to monopolize since the purchasers are not users. and they need carteling to maintain dominance over a product so simple
I 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.
Nice. 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.
I 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
In 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.
Finally, 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.
> 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.)
>NC licenses do not qualify as “open licenses” under the Open Definition, and works licensed under an NC license are not considered Free Cultural Works
Selling 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.
Canon 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.
I 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)
> I 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
Few people seem to realize that ink is incredibly cheap. You just need to buy it third party. The most expensive part of an ink cartridge is the chips used to DRM them to lock you in
I feel lucky to live in SF where the library let's you print up to 20 pages per day for free. I really wonder how many people don't buy printers because of it. Then again many people can use work printers for free anyway.
wait since when is that free? I've popped into the main branch to run off documents and definitely paid per page (although it's only something like 5 or 10 cents).
HP, 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.
This 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.
It 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.
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.
I 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.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 86.6 ms ] threadIt 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.
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.
90% of what I use my printer for is printing mailing labels for packages.
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.
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.
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.
It does look fantastic but I fear vaporware.
> 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.)
But if the cartridge holder breaks, a repair service cannot print a new one.
And if PCB breaks, a repair service cannot order a new one either.
Even CC highlights this
>NC licenses do not qualify as “open licenses” under the Open Definition, and works licensed under an NC license are not considered Free Cultural Works
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpre...
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.
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.
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)
Few people seem to realize that ink is incredibly cheap. You just need to buy it third party. The most expensive part of an ink cartridge is the chips used to DRM them to lock you in
https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/341987
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.
> 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.
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.
I hope this company gets big enough and starts licensing its technology to other manufacturers.