Refilling an ink jet cartridge with highlighter ink | Hacker News Reader

Refilling an ink jet cartridge with highlighter ink

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122 pointsluu62 comments

Actually squeezing it from a highlighter is messy and unnecessary. You can buy bottled highlighter ink for fountain pens pretty cheaply.

(there are special super-broad pen nibs for highlighting work. To use bulk ink, you have a "converter" cartridge with a piston or squeeze-bottle that allows you to suck ink out of the bottle and into the pen)

Since you specifically seem to be after fluorescent, here's somewhere to get started:

https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink?filters%5...

Here's an "invisible ink": https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/...

Or a yellow highlighter ink: https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/...

Pink: https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/bottled-ink/products/...

I am not 100% sure that the viscosity will exactly match what printer ink is, but if it's too thick you could cut it with isopropyl alcohol or similar.

edit: on further reflection if your goal is something that is visible outside of a blacklight, the darker colors might have more pigment and thus be more visible, although still probably quite light.

Emily's a hacker who does a lot for fun and amusement. I get the sense that doing this in an efficient and effective way was not the end goal.

Yea, she has another video where she uses an Arduino to run an old printer, when it would have been way simpler to get a USB to parallel port adapter.

Seriously, I've followed her for a while on Twitter, and she does a lot of really fun crazy stuff. I've really enjoyed having a twitter feed centered around positive, fun feeds.

Good to see the Goulet Pens links.

I never found a reliable refillable rollerball to use with my FP ink, so I ended up using a Pilot Precise V7 refillable model from JetPens. I thought I was pretty clever.

I never thought of refilling inkjet carts with this though, so clearly I'm not too clever yet!

Inkjet printers can use a variety of inks, one notable application is the special third-party inks used for thermal transfers on clothing and such:

https://www.inksupply.com/heat_transfer_ink.cfm

The printer shown here is based on the original HP Bubblejet thermal technology, and thermal printheads are less flexible with the types of inks they can use; hence why Epsons (piezoelectric head) tend to be preferred by those using alternative inks.

I work with a very small group at HP that uses inkjet technology to dispense fluids for work in life sciences. Basically, inkjet TIJ technology lets you dispense very precise amounts of material with very precise timing. Normally that's just ink, but you can do it with quite a few other things.

In our case, what we do is dispense liquids that normally would be done with a micropipette. We can mix up to 8 different materials in different combinations as part of various life sciences experiments.

Guessing you're in the group that makes these?

https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-prin...

There's no pricing on that page. :(

Any idea what kind of price (even range) they're in?

These here -> https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-prin...

I'm not 100% sure of the price but ... well we don't sell them at Best Buy :)

The whole SPS group (Specialty Print Systems) focuses on using the inkjet technology for things HP may wish to not sell or market to directly. Like barcode printers, etc.

Definitely reach out via the contact info at the bottom if you're interested.

Thanks, that's the page I thought I linked to, but didn't get right. :)

Was asking mostly from curiosity, as I've been helping out a local Community Biolab recently with "tech stuff" ;).

Will remember to point it out to the people there when I'm next in, likely after this COVID thing dies down. Hopefully. :)

Maybe this quarantine actually leads to enough random exploration in people’s free time, that we see an explosion of creative new startups afterwards.

“Creative creation” as the libertarian economists might say.

If we gave people UBI we could have this "creative creation" happening all the time

Or even a less radical step: guaranteeing healthcare for all citizens so it's not tied to employment at a large company.

Agreed. As long as the country is not capable of pulling that off, any discussion of UBI is a waste of time.

Civilised countries already do this!

Genuinely curious: why was this downvoted when the parent comment was not?

The one thing I don't get about UBI is who does the "shit" jobs. Those jobs that are low-skill low-pay under the current system. Most people who do those jobs do so only because the alternative is worse.

Even in places with generous social-welfare systems there tends to be social pressure against relying on it, but making the payments universal seems likely to remove that stigma.

The first order effects are obviously very positive (lookup the term "wage slavery" for some of the moral arguments against such jobs), but it's hard to predict what the higher order effects of a transition away from a system that has basically been in place since the industrial revolution.

You pay them more.

I suppose if those jobs are so terrible that no one who has UBI wants to do them, they'll have to pay a fair wage to attract people. If they're truly necessary, wages will rise until until positions are filled. And yes, you may now have to pay more for work that was woefully underpaid previously.

If your scenario comes to pass, it just means we've been taking advantage of the people who currently work those jobs because they have no other alternative.

But what happens when all prices go up? If everyone gets paid more, wouldn't the UBI be worthless? Landlords will just raise prices since working people will always have more money (UBI + salary) than non workers? Just like now? Same goes for almost every service.

Real supply and demand will stay the same, real economic production will probably stay the same too. So what's the point? 2000$ only feels a lot right now because it's an amount of money that represents a lot of work for a lot of people. Sure, you can link some small scale UBI experiments, but they have all been done in the context of a broader economy where the amounts given still had purchasing power.

There's a reason why most economists don't agree with UBI. I know people on HN love to discredit economists, but the push for UBI here is ridiculous. It is akin to simply denying a whole scientific field because you feel it's are wrong

>It is akin to simply denying a whole scientific field because you feel it's are wrong

Economics isn't a science.

To a certain extent, it's like raising the minimum range, only more so. A lot of jobs will just disappear.

> they'll have to pay a fair wage to attract people.

Wages aren't defined based on what is fair or unfair. They're decided based on supply and demand for labor, thankfully.

A "shit job" is by definition one that creates little value because value is defined as what is lost when someone exits the picture. Workers in those "shit jobs" can be immediately replaced so no value is really lost by their exit, so their value is close to zero.

> A "shit job" is by definition one that creates little value because value is defined as what is lost when someone exits the picture.

There are two people involved in the transaction: the worker and the employer. The employer will value the work at a value greater than the wage, otherwise they would be more profitable just by firing the worker. Similarly the worker will value the wage more than the job, because otherwise they would quit.

When most people talk about the "value" of a job, they tend to not use either local definition, but from a more global definition of "how bad off would society be if nobody did this job" and that more closely aligns with the employer's value than the worker's (e.g. for services jobs the employer makes money on the spread between what customers will pay and what workers will work for, so clearly customers value the job at some margin above the wage, and we can use customers as a proxy for "society")

Without UBI, the wage is what lets the worker not end up homeless and starving (or begging), so someone with no better job prospects will value the wage very highly. Once you add UBI into the mixture though, maybe it's "move into a larger apartment" or "eat out somewhere nice once in a while" and suddenly they value the wage much less.

Providing a UBI doesn't mean market forces vanish, it would just shift/adjust those market forces. I think these "shit" jobs would either cease to exist if they weren't really necessary, be replaced by automated solutions, or be compensated at a high enough rate that someone would be still be willing to do them. It seems like all three of those would be net positives economically.

Those jobs would have to be paid exceptionally well, in order to be attractive, if you want more than just the UBI-life.

It would totally change how we look at people doing those unpleasant jobs. Let's be honest, right now it's a bit of a caste system.

Everyone else thinks something nice and utopian would happen, but my guess is that "working five years at a shit job" would become the new "getting a bachelor's degree in pretty much anything" that employers would look for as a way to prove conscientiousness, when hiring for the high-paying jobs.

Anyone wanting to make more than UBI pays out, would have to first "do their time" in the sucky jobs, in order to get the "credential" of having done so. It'd be a generalization of the concept of internships, where companies would admit that—like with university—where you interned, and what you interned in, doesn't actually matter, so much as the fact that you interned somewhere doing something.

well, who does the secretarial jobs now that we eliminated the secretarial class?

I suspect, many of the "shit" jobs will "die" out, or at least need a lots less people. I could easily imagine trash-collection, deliveries, all-kinds-of driving, cleaning etc to become fully-ish(95%+) automated, if not entirely for large sectors.

Hell, if BostonDynamics can build RoboSoldiers, that can salto and run parcour, they sure as hell can build something, that can scrub my toilet. Currently I can't afford their "house-hold"-chores model, but in ten years Samsung will probably have a line-up of models between 1000€ and 10000€

Plumbing will unlikely ever any time soon be fully automated... it's too varied in terms of existing structures until AI becomes actual life. Similar for a lot of "dirty jobs."

Just look at how poorly the couple of attempts at McD's to automate the cooking processes, they failed miserably... Even today there's a lot of manual work in automated factories.

It was my impression, that OP was using the term "shit jobs" to denote jobs with low pay, but high effort, manual, dangerous, etc.

"Plumbing" is therefore not a "shit job". It's well paid compared to most (Uber/Taxi/etc-)driving, cleaning, trash-collecting and many other jobs.

Trash collecting tends to pay pretty well too.

Yes, but trash collecting is super-easy to automate compared to automated "finding-of-plumbing-solutions".

It all depends on the ratio "Ease-of-implementation" / "Cost of existing manpower" for each sector of job.

Even then, your own definition of shit jobs, " low pay, but high effort, manual, dangerous, etc." doesn't really correspond that well.

High effort and dangerous jobs usually pay well... low paying jobs are inherently manual, and/or likely to be automated away. In the end, some things don't automate well. There's a human aspect to a lot of things, and many of those won't be displaced soon. Of course, I do understand that many other jobs cannot fill the void that will be lost, especially with an ever expanding population.

When noone is forced to do them, the community will have to learn to recognize and honor them as essential public service. This can be done in many ways, not only by paying money.

One person's "shit job", is another persons fun job. We are all brainwashed that "low skill" is bad. I know people who enjoy cleaning. I love cooking, but want to maintain the lifestyle that working in software gives me. If UBI was there in the background, people could pursue their passions. Today, the situation is "what should I pursue so I can make money", not "what should I pursue so I can be happy".

No one wants to clean toilets

So with UBI demand for self-cleaning toilets comes up high enough that they're mass produced and i can pick one up at Lowe's any random weekend? Sounds good.

It looks like obblekk's comment is getting some down-votes (appears gray to me). I'm honestly curious what people's objection to this comment/idea is?

I'm not saying that this will necessarily happen, but it's not a crazy thought. Anecdotally more then a few people I know have taken the time stuck at home to pursue things like reading, taking online courses, watching/reading tutorials, and working on side-projects.

In any case, hoping that something positive may come out of this bad situation just seems so fundamentally unobjectionable to me, I'm curious what other's thoughts are about this?

Reminds me of the barely visible yellow tracking dots that some color inkjets produce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code

Wait, so why was the print out only visible under a black light?

It's probably very faintly visible in ordinary light, but what makes fluorescent ink interesting is that it fluoresces, i.e. it reflects UV light in the visible spectrum, which makes it seem brighter than normal pigments. So the blacklight makes it much more visible.

Ah! So in the words, the printer is placing a thinner (ie, too thin) layer of ink on the paper than a human with a highlighter would, right?

Yep, printer ink has much more pigment in it because a few ml of ink has to cover hundreds of pages

That, or the brightener particles are making it through the nozzle, but the nozzle diameter is too fine for the highlighter pigment particles themselves.

Interesting, but it's a lot easier to just toss out the inkjet and buy an inexpensive laser printer. You can even buy a small-office color laser printer for $200-300 these days. And 3rd-party toner cartridges for these printers are ubiquitous and cheap and work fine. Why does anyone use inkjets any more? The entire industry is just a big scam.

You can get good printers used too. My last printer served me for about 10 years. I don't print a lot, so I only did a couple thousand prints during that time. Not enough enough to finish off the cartridge that was in it when I bought the printer. I paid $50.

I don't know if you can get highlighter toner for a laser printer.

Very high end devices (the size of a printing press) will sometimes have spot color capabilities, for finishes like neon colors or clear coating

Inkjet has far superior color reproduction to laser. Even the highest end production color laser copiers can't do the same level of color matching that inkjet can

As for home/office use, yes inkjets are a huge scam

> Interesting, but it's a lot easier to just toss out the inkjet and buy an inexpensive laser printer.

Ah yes, the true hacker ethos.

I had wondered how this individual was going to make Inkjet printer ink out of highlighter pens. I mean, considering the ink is priced somewhere around the same rate as liquid gold, I figured it was either going to end up being "way too easy" or we'd find out there was some important reason ink was so expensive.

Neither was the result -- that's a Dot Matrix printer. I'd imagine if I'd have turned the volume on, you'd hear the obnoxious sound they make when printing. Still very cool, though.

That's actually a very early (monochrome) inkjet, and this is the cartridge for it --- appears to be based on the first HP design:

http://starcommtest.printerinkwarehouse.com/printer/Diconix+...

This might be the printer model, or a related one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-sL5UtqHCA

Edit: Found something else she did with that printer, and confirms that it's the model above: https://hackaday.com/2020/01/09/vintage-mini-inkjet-prints-o...

I always am impressed how people clearly can tell someone got the difference between a dot matrix printer and an inkjet wrong despite working with it for months, just from seeing a short silent video snippet.

BTW: https://twitter.com/MLE_Online/status/1243551232087584770

To be fair, I think this may be the first time a lot of people, even HN users, have seen a tractor-feed inkjet.

And if the submission was a question "what kind of printer is this", misidentifying it would be a completely harmless mistake. Assuming that the person owning it, clearly labeling it an inkjet, refilling its ink tank (did dot matrix printers ever have that?) must be the one wrong about it, less so.

> Neither was the result -- that's a Dot Matrix printer.

You’re mistaken.

Since nobody else has explained why so far, the smoking gun that makes it clear it's not a dot matrix printer is that dot matrix printers put ink onto paper using pins to strike a ribbon.

They work on the same principle as typewriters did, which also used a ribbon. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter_ribbon)

The reason they're called "dot matrix" was to distinguish them from another contemporary type of printer that had type (letterforms) built directly into a ball or wheel, so that instead of an array of pins, a raised metal piece in the shape of (say) an "A" would strike the ribbon. ("Daisy wheel" printers were of this type.) These had nicer-looking, non-pixellated type, but they were slow and couldn't do any graphics.

So if this really were a dot-matrix printer, she would have been putting highlighter ink onto a ribbon, but she was putting ink into a reservoir.

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