Hey folks, are there any “open hardware” printers (as in regular 2D paper printers) you are aware of?
I’ve has this stupid issue with this cheapo Epson claiming their “waste ink pad” is “full” and needs to be “serviced”. This is for an office printer.
Well genius, first off, why are you wasting my ink? This is a refillable ink tank model and just because its refillable (and near totally destroyed the traditional ink cartridge business model), I know they CAN use a paper in lieu of an inkpad because thats how older printer cleaned the print heads of their inkjets. I didnt even had this problem when I refilled their cartridges back then.
Anyway, I was curious if could have my own 2D printer from a possibly “converted” open hardware 3D printer? Has anyone done this? I just want to see Epson’s business model burn down further…
Wow! I wasnt actually expecting a practically a robotic “arm” doing the printing, or rather in this case, writing. I was hoping for something like a dot matrix but with maybe an ink instead of ribbon. Very interesting though, I like it!
I seem to recall someone hacked an older HP print head and was driving it using “open source” hardware … maybe it was Youtuber Applied Science? HP used to integrate a print head in every ink cartridge, so they were widely available and low cost.
Inkjet is really the only avenue I see open for hacking in an open source manner, other than using a robot arm to draw with a pen, marker, laser, etc.