We’re 20 years late on this
It looks really neat! Depending on the price, I might get one :)
Expect this to be priced like a laser printer. Most inkjet printers are subsidized by cartridge lock in and ink priced higher than platinum by ounce.
Honestly, I don’t mind inkjet as a technology, the quality is plenty good and I don’t give a crap about speed. And as you can see from this design they’re a whole lot more compact. The whole reason I don’t use them is the predatory ink pricing, which this product in theory solves!
For now, you can get inkjet printers that use liquid ink. Ostensibly Canon wants me to use Canon brand ink for my printer, but there’s nothing stopping me from buying some off brand and dumping it in the tanks
Tank inkjets tend not to be subsidized because of the lack of lock in. They’re considerably more expensive than those that use cartridges. So you are paying for the ability to put in whatever you want.
Yeah, mine did cost like $160, but it is nice to know that canon can’t decide to end support and brick it in 10 years
That’s actually a good deal for a tank inkjet last I saw.
Which to me is a no-brainer. (I do have a laser printer though)
… supports 600 dpi black-and-white printing and 1,200 dpi color.
Ouch. 600 DPI black and white and “1200 DPI” color resolution is very low for an inkjet.
The big missing detail remains price.
At these resolutions I’d rather get a laser printer that’s well supported in Linux no matter what the price is.
I mean, commercial printing is typically 300-600 DPI…
The big thing here is this printer is repairable, there no spyware or vendor lock in for specific ink cartridges.
This is hardware that if you buy you truly own.
Honestly for these reasons alone I am going to buy this.
Fair, and I admire them for trying. I was just pointing out that these specs are closer to a 10-15 yo laser printer, which is likely cheaper to buy and print with.
If they were producing q laser printer of similar specs with open firmware I’d be first in line to get one.
A 10 to 15 year old laser printer is going to have its fuser fail in a year and that replacement part costs as much as a new printer.
I went immediately “they started making opensource print heads… since that is huge effort”… Oh it is just a carrier assembly for HP inkcartridges. Sure hack refillable ones, but still the main printing part is from big corporate. Waiting for the moment of “HP implemented backward DRM on their cartridge. HP cartridge only works, if it hears correct attestation from the printer.”
This all is based on them hacking a corporate part and that is newer sustainable open hardware route.
Using a print head a maker sells as just “We make printheads, what you do with it after is your business. We exactly sell these as industrial parts from people to build printer around (or whatever other device you have use for ink depositing thingie in)” fine. That is normal.
But “hey we made open inkjet printer”. “So you figured the vast tasks of designing and manufacturing inkjet print heads?” “No” “You found a suitable standard industrial part to build around, less amazing, but still okay?” “No” “So what did you figure out or provide to table?” “We hacked HPs part”. Soooo everyone using this is still paying HP tax and who knows HP might shut this whole thing down one way or another.
edit: Not to mention it is not like it is some impossible task to get inkjet printheads, like all legit and so on. One web search later leads for example to KonicaMinolta industrials website for their catalog of “Here we sell just the Inkjet heads, incase you want to make a printer. Here is the spec sheet how to run it.”
So in the end is just another open project goin to fail :(
That doesn’t sound right, so I pulled up the specs of my Canon Pixma. It’s also 1200dpi, so this matches up with my regular consumer printer.
What printers are you using where 1200dpi is low?
Well, your Canon Pixma is real 1200 dpi, this one on the other hand is 600 in bw and 1200 in color. Generally speaking, this is a marketing trick used by printer manufacturers to make a printer sound better and what they do is they sum the dots of each color, advertising resolutions like 4800 x 1200 dpi. This means the actual resolution is 1200 dpi but horizontally they count the dots of each CMYK channel.
My guess is they can print a stable image in bw at 600 dpi, but in color they are limited to 300 (multiplied by the 4 channels). Also my guess is that this is because they seem to be struggling with halftoning, as written in the article:
On the software side, work continues on Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, as well as dithering algorithms designed to improve image quality.
Also, keep in mind dpi is not linear. Images are 2d, so a 1200 dpi print contains 4X the dots of a 600 dpi print.
Okay, but that doesn’t answer the question. You’re claiming 1200dpi is very low, but aren’t backing that up.
I’m sorry, English is not my first language, and I may not have explained clearly.
The open printer likely prints at 1200 x 300 dpi (explained in my other comment) in color and the author of the article just reported it as 1200.
There is no was they can achieve stable cmyK prints at 1200 dpi, but only 600 dpi with just the K.
Therefore your printer is likely 16X more precise than the open one. This is quite important as inkjet printing is meant for high quality prints as it’s both slow and expensive.
I remember owning 300dpi printers.
And dot matrix printers!
Would be nice, if it was USB by default and Ethernet/Wifi just a module you attach. For most users (and companies), the IoT part of printers is actually a security hazard. Especially for such a portable device.
Ethernet by default with an optional WiFi module would be ideal.
i can’t remember the last job i had with non networked printers. that would only work with very small offices.
For a reasonable price and good reviews, this could be my next printer.
I want to support this but what stops me is ink. Is ink the best choice over toner or laser?
laser printers or toner
Laser printers use toner.
Laser printers are also more complex devices.
Dude just get a powder toner laser printer. I’ve been filling the stock toners in my Lexmark instead of buying ink. Fuck, ink.
I’ll stick with my 15 year old brother laser that’s still works just fine.
Which one? I find the print quality from Brother to be below HP, I think because Brother uses LED and not laser.
Don’t bother my Brother, brother from another mother! We’re Brother brothers!
Semantic satiation is kicking in…
Pre AI driven ram/nand increases: < $500 probably. Now, probably >= $1000.
If someone can make an open-source 24 pin dot matrix printer, that would rule.
The sound of a dot matrix printer is bliss
Just hammering away like it’s life depends on it then that sweet rip of the page
Man that brings me back
Oh… does anyone still make fanfold paper?
Seems to me needlessly mechanically complicated. Why not just build for single standard paper, then complicate later?
I suspect because feeding and aligning sheets is much harder than feeding from a roll. Probably requires some sensing hardware, which might be fiddly.
Based on the description, it’s perfectly capable of printing single standard (letter, A4, even A3) paper. The roll is just an option.
How is pulling a sheet from a roll more complicated than pulling a sheet from a stack?
Higher chance for paper jams to occur maybe?
Nah, feeding from a roll is significantly easier than feeding from a stack of sheets. Tons of variables when it comes to the stack whole a roll is much more consistent and avoids the issue of reliably pulling a single sheet from a stack which is not a trivial problem.
Yea its sometimes quite hard to separate pieces of paper with your fingers, i have no idea how machines do it
They dip their fingers in honey first.
A bunch of rollers that need to be cleaned fastidiously if you want them to keep working.
There is still work to do before it lands in users’ hands. The team says it is optimizing the ink-drying system, refining printhead cleaning cycles, improving paper insertion, and trying to boost print speeds. On the software side, work continues on Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, as well as dithering algorithms designed to improve image quality.
Here’s the video of it in action:
“Doesn’t allow people to build it”
Uuh, that sucks but i guess that perfection is the enemy of good
On the one hand, I’m really excited about this because the printer industry is literally the worst. On the other hand, I haven’t printed anything for years, I probably won’t use it much/ever.
I print things still pretty consistently. Random forms that need hard copies to have a wet signature, activity sheets for the kids to color, templates for drilling holes in walls, etc. Make the business a lot less toxic and I think you’ll start seeing printers in more homes again.
Say it with me pow-der based to-ners.
For printing art? :<
That’s why I want a printer, personally. For documents and stuff we can go to the library. Printing kinky furry art, not so much.
– Frost
Anything. Literally anything. I’ve noticed laser printing for pictures gives that nice quality and it just bumps everything up by a mile. https://www.lexmark.com/en_us/printers/printer/14385/Lexmark-C3224dw
That’s the one I’ve had for almost ten years.
The new model is exactly the same and like 350$ but the amount of money you save on ink is incredible. I ate the high upfront cost because I knew I would be saving on ink.
I got the big bottles of toner powder for like I think 80$ (ebay) which is what the cost of one ink cartridge. So for the cost of an ink cartridge I have 3 1/2 refills worth of powder for my toners.
Ooh, good to hear there are laser printers out there that can print good art!
Also $80 for a cartridge?? holy HECK ink is a ripoff. Wow.
– Frost
Also $80 for a cartridge?? holy HECK ink is a ripoff. Wow.
I haven’t purchased ink in so long I forgot the price. I just googled it. Looks like it could range depending on the brand name and the printer you’re getting the ink for could be 15$ could be 60$ depending on full sets or singles but they’re so small and run out so quick. You’d be spending 60$ on like three cartridges for what a laser printer could do for less than half of that. And that would be just your black cartridge. So if all of them ran out that’s about 80$ a set.
My ink printer which has been empty on ink since 2017, is my scanner and nothing else. I think I got that printer free with a mail-in rebate.
Rememeber when they used to just give printers away with almost anything? Buy a camera you get a printer with a mail-in rebate, but a stereo you get a pritner, buy any computer over 400$ and you get a fuckin’ printer 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Its probably just much cheaper and easier, unless you absolutely have to have color, to go to good will and get a brother laser printer for like 10 bucks.
I got one years ago and its still on the original toner cart it came with, and I print decently often.
Who the prints stuff on paper in 2026/2027.
Print out my campsite instructions since it’s supposed to be outside of internet service.
If you’re working on a manifesto it’s a good idea to print it out so it’s easy to find.
I’m as grumpy and old-school as they come and even I only print about a sheet a month. Usually some datasheet, a technical document, for me to scribble on as I work things out.
Label stickers, coloring sheets/labyrinths for kids, sheet music for the piano… It’s about 4 pages a month, but it’s not nothing
So this year at home I’ve printed: packing slips and address labels, images for the kids are project, insurance documents to keep in the car (Europe trip), plane tickets as a backup. Some course notes summary things.
At work: fuck loads of stuff, basically same as home x10
