I don’t have to tell anyone that commercial printers suck (with the possible exception of Brother, but how long will this last?). I’ve read people on Lemmy talk about the viability of making a FOSS printer. I’d like to keep these thoughts going.

From what I remember, there are four main challenges, listed descendingly by their apparent difficulty:

  1. Handling ink
  2. Meeting legal regulations
  3. Moving the moving parts
  4. Patents

Patent difficulties indeed should be avoidable, since decent printers have been out there for way more than 20 years, the usual duration of a patent.

Moving the moving parts with the high precision necessary does at first glance seem daunting, but I’ve read people say that this is a problem many people know how to solve.

Meeting the legal obligations may ne trickier: Printer fingerprints? Aerosols? Other health and environmental hazards?

Handling ink: From what I remember, this would be the main difficulty (unfortunately I can’t find that post or comment anymore). One should avoid the problem of creating an own cartridge & nozzle production by designing the printer such that it can use an existing cartridge model (one for which there are good third-party offers). Still, one would have to solve the apparently very difficult problem that the ink/toner has to be handled under very precise conditions, regarding things like flow velocity, drying rate, and perhaps temperature.

In view of these challenges, I’ve started to think that maybe the best approach would be to try our best to find ex-employees of printer companies and convince them that they would be doing humanity a huge service if they were to contribute with whatever they legally can towards developing a FOSS printer.

Also, I’ve wondered whether the time to do this may be running out: If even Brother one day starts to crack down on third-party ink/toner, all the producers for third-party ink/toner could eventually go out of business; so that one may successfully develop a FOSS printer, only to have no other ink in the stores than the price-gouged one, which was the reason to do all this in the first place.

Do you have any corrections, specifications, or further thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

  • TragicNotCute@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    Have you considered using thermal printing as a starting place? The technology is old and free to use, parents have been expired for 20+ years at this point. It eliminates the need for ink entirely which seems like a big pro. The prints fade over time though, which isn’t great. But I have a thermal printer and use it often. Do you always need archival level artifacts printed? Anyway, it’s a cool idea. I wish you luck.

  • CameronDev@programming.dev
    0·
    1 day ago

    Precision movement is definitely solved, but rapid precision movement required for fast printing isnt easy, and requires tuning.

    The legal requirements likely only apply to commercially sold and operated printers. Patents really only matter once you are making significant money, HP et al. aren’t going to give a shit about diy efforts. Not a lawyer though.

    The real issue is that printers are already dirt cheap (and despite some complaining here and there, work really well). Its hard to convince people to invest hundred to thousands of dollars to diy build a printer when you can buy one from an office supply chain for $50 (its wasteful, because it’ll only last a year, but it makes financial sense). Even diy 3d printing is basically dieing out with people preferring to buy an off-the-shelf system.