Why isn't there a FOSS printer? Like, a regular printer?
3d printers are more reliable than regular printers at this point, it's insane how bad they are
why? even the most weird 3d printer designs just werk
i've never seen a flying inkjet
Why isn't there a FOSS printer? Like, a regular printer?
>inkjet on a drone
think of the graphiti
cia likes you solving "make small robot move" problems
it doesnt like you solving "print high quality paper without censorship" for money laundering reasons
well, handheld printers are a thing
dono why you would want to shove these into drones, but once hangar wagie gets replaced by robo-Black folk these might become a thing.
or we would just put these printers into roboBlack folk arms, that would make more sense
open source weenies are scared of hardware
It costs money and open source doesn't pay
I agree I find it really bizarre, it's hard to find a simple cheap printer that doesn't have massive connectivity problems or other issues.
3D printers get more attention because it's flashy meme tech and it seems the biggest driver of tech R&D these days is how much YouTube clicks it'll end up generating.
Inkjet head is a special ASIC which unfortunately is beyond the capabilities of freetards to design let even produce. So the only way you can do FOSS in printers is writing drivers for already existing ones
The tool-heads are too hard to make. Making the motion system would be trivial, but you'd have to mount a proprietary tool-head to it. Why bother?
Convenience and cost. There's hardly any incentive buying or even building a FOSS printer that isn't subsidised by future ink sales when an off the shelf machine will set you back like 40bucks. Sure, there's expensive ink to be bought in the future, but that's a long time till then.
Considering laser printers exist and are commonly recommended to people who hate inkjets, I think there's definitely plenty of people willing to pay more for a printer if it means they don't get scammed. Personally, I'd gladly pay the price of hardware + some profit markup for an open printer.
>I think there's definitely plenty of people willing to pay more for a printer if it means they don't get scammed
Except that the first example of this thread, 3D printers, has already proved you wrong. People by an large get the cheapest machine they can get and higher price is running against barriers even if they're working exceptional well.
All that said, if price is indeed less of a problem, many people have built some kind of plotter already, might just miniaturise one.
Well with 3D printers, I think most people will at the very least buy something like the Ender 3, despite there being stuff available that's half the price.
But the thing is, unlike 2D printing, 3D printing at the cheapest is still "open" to a large extent. Most of the parts are pretty standard, and things like the nozzle and build plate can be easily swapped out and replaced. The entire hobby is very community-driven and mod-heavy, so at its core it doesn't suffer from the same issues that plagues 2D printing.
Plus, more expensive 3D printers exist, and their prices are often justified with features like build volume, dual extrusion, etc. Why would so many manufacturers continue to sell expensive 3D printers if there were no market for it? Clearly, many people are willing to pay the extra money for them.
>Well with 3D printers, I think most people will at the very least buy something like the Ender 3, despite there being stuff available that's half the price.
Frick's sitting at half the price of an Ender 3?
>Plus, more expensive 3D printers exist, and their prices are often justified with features like build volume, dual extrusion, etc.
And are relevant to how many people? Just like a dumb PLA pusher is the main seller in the 3D printing world, a dumb A4 pusher is the main seller in the 2D printing world. A feature like laser printing is almost impossible to follow up, as there's no real easy to build one at home.
>Frick's sitting at half the price of an Ender 3?
The price was a bit of an exaggeration, but there's some real dogshit on Amazon if you skip over the popular stuff.
>And relevant to how many people?
Enough to keep the market afloat and make the manufacturers some profit, which is plenty I think.
My point is that even if most people still buy those cheapo $40 HP inkjets, enough people would be willing to buy a more expensive printer to keep the product viable. Even completely tech-illiterate normies are well aware of how much of a scam 2D printers are, so I have no doubt that at least some of them would be willing to fork over the extra cash for a printer that doesn't actively hate them.
>enough people would be willing to buy a more expensive printer to keep the product viable.
Guess that's where our opinions differ. From what i am seeing everyone is just waiting to ditch paper altogether to do everything on their smartphone.
Because it's not viable.
I agree with this anon. People are ditching paper for personal use. Corporations love proprietary things for accountability (which is why many companies run RHEL/Ubuntu for servers), and the same goes for hardware.
At least we have Gutenprint.
Yeah it's true that people are ditching paper, and yes companies love proprietary stuff so they probably aren't interested in something like that. But I still think there are enough people who want to print stuff (eg. hobbyists and teachers) that it'd still be a viable product. Maybe I'm wrong.
>hobbyists and group that rarely has a say in their spending
Boy doesn't that sound lucrative.
Why don't you start a company exploiting this obvious niche?
pin cnc robot
Because they require printer manufacturers to put machine identifiable code on paper
I've seen industrial packaging printers that use the old HP cartridges with built-in head but with a custom controller
because printing is difficult and the printer companies ow the ink companies so you get maximum israelite'd
Alternatively, laser engraving, engravers, and open source drawing devices exist.