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Comment by tiku | Hacker News Reader

Why is there no open source printer yet? We have the most cool 3d printing rigs, mounting it to some rails etc is not the problem.. Just a black and white printer, nothing fancy..

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My understanding is that the nozzles for squirting the ink are genuinely difficult things to design and manufacture. I so far think too few people have the expertise and resources to make an open source version.

I wonder if one could design open source replacement electronics for an off-the-shelf printer. Keep the mechanical, replace the electronics and the software.

(I'm assuming any moderately successful open source firmware-only effort would motivate manufacturers to start using some kind of "trust management" garbage in future models.)

laser could be easier right?

Technically, we do. Pen Plotters. You can even re-use a large part of your 3d printer frame.

The same reason printers made by large manufacturers break all the time: printing is hard.

Even just open source firmware for an existing proprietary printer would be interesting.

Alternatively (and as a shortcut to not deal with hardware that's actually difficult to build), why is there no FOSS aftermarket firmware?

2d printing sounds a bit less romantic than the 3d kind.

This. 3D printing is a trendy fashion, 2D is boring.

I'm sure the community has enough intellectual ability to create, if not a full printer, at least replacement firmware for existing ones. There just doesn't seem to be much motivation to do so.

If you're willing to waste a stupid amount of plastic you can 3D print a stamp and stamp your letter. You could do multi-color printing if you used a paintbrush instead of a roller to apply the ink.

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