We could probably print one with a 3d printer.
this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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It's wild to think about, but 3D filament extrusion printers are actually a lot more simple than ink/toner document printers. I think the age of printing - at least in home and small office settings - is coming to an end. Most people I know don't have one and those that do can only think of "so I can print boarding passes" as a reason.
I am once again telling you about my old HP inkjet printer that has no internet connection, takes refills, the ink never dries out and it prints black and white without needing any color ink.
Printers peaked 15-20 years ago and I got lucky and bought one at the right time. The best part is when I buy new ink the money goes to someone who refills cartridges and none of it to HP.
there is a near endless supply of brother laser printers at thrift stores for under 15 bucks. and they come with toner carts still in them.
the last one I got from goodwill is still going strong on the toner that came with it, and its been years.
and if the toner ever does wear out, hell, I could buy 3 more printers for what the toner would cost.
also bonus that brother printers work super good in linux, least headache i've ever had installing a printer.
It's funny because anecdotally, the entirety of the FOSS movement was started because Richard Stallman was tilted that he had the know-how to fix the printer at the lab he worked at, but was not legally allowed to.
You'd think "Printers" would have been the first thing the FSF would have tried to create.
It does seem ironic that we have opensource 3d printers before 2d printers.
5-yo reddit thread lol - We should create an open source 2d printer
Newer post on Hardware Hub: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/open-source-printer-concept/204444
As someone who's assembled a couple of FDM* 3D printers and disassembled a number of 2D printers, the latter is usually a lot more complicated mechanically (varies a lot by features provided, like double-sided print).
I’ve had the same hp laserjet pro printer, just checked Amazon, since March 2015. It has worked without issue through various windows, iOS, and Linux systems. Using native drivers, cups, and the web interface on my lan. I would argue it is one of the most reliable and dependable devices I’ve owned and has maintained compatibility with anything and everything without requiring anything be done to it other than I’m on my third cartridge that I purchased a pack of 2 of for $26.98 in October of 2021 which still seem to sell for $25… I may just order another pack.
LxTek Compatible Toner Cartridge 83A Replacement for HP 83A CF283A Compatible with Laserjet Pro MFP M125nw M201dw M225dw M201n M125a M127fn M127fw, 2 Black
I don’t understand the persistent whining about printers. If you need color or graphics send them to CVS or some shit to have them printed on a professional quality printer and paper for less than it used to cost to develop a roll of film or print it off at work on a high end laser color printer. I can’t believe people still piss their money away on throw away ink jet printers. I know otherwise seemingly intelligent people that can’t be swayed that they are actually throwing money away because “I got a new printer for less than the ink cost!!!”, yeah dumbass, you are generating e-waste and getting cartridges with barely any ink in them, you didn’t decode the matrix.
Printers are of exceptional quality in my experience.
Edit: I also spent just under two years navigating up the system admin ranks as a printer admin and managed almost 300 laser printers supporting over 3,000 users and I’m fairly certain most issues admins create for themselves, or had a prior admin create for them, because they aren’t willing to really understand how to setup a print server and just make it work asap. Once the server(s) and printers are setup and configured correctly the only maintenance any of those printers required was after well over 100k pages.
If you're worried about opsec and want to like, print subversive pamphlets, one way to do it would be to use a 3D printer. Literally 3D a small printing press. Use 3d printed movable type. Or perhaps better, just print the sheet of a pamphlet as a single print and swap out the pages as you go.
If you wanted a secure way to print something, you could use an open source 3D printer to do it. You're just using it to make plates for a literal old-fashioned screw-type printing press.
I mean, there’s no reason why a 3D printer couldn’t be rigged up to use a stylus instead of an extruder. (Plotters exist after all.) Probably not very performant compared to your solution though.
I do love the idea of making old timey printing plates using a 3D printer. If you printed in TPU would that make the equivalent of a rubber stamp?
I do love the idea of making old timey printing plates using a 3D printer. If you printed in TPU would that make the equivalent of a rubber stamp?
Probably.
I mean, there’s no reason why a 3D printer couldn’t be rigged up to use a stylus instead of an extruder. (Plotters exist after all.) Probably not very performant compared to your solution though.
Yeah, plotters exist, but they're slow. The reason I mention subversive literature is that activist groups are some of those that would most benefit from an open source printer option. Regular commercial printers all have government-mandated fingerprinting software built into them. A home made printing press gives you the throughput of an inkjet printer but without the opsec issues.
Its crazy how we now have 3D printers that consistently work every time with very little fuss but 2D printers are somehow still shit.
That's because it's a lot harder to feed paper and put multicolored tiny dots on it than it is to move a nozzle around and feed a comparatively large squirt of filament.
But we've had 2D printers for longer? That would imply that its a simpler task, not having to deal with temperature and layer adhesion and all.
Things do not always get implemented in complexity order. A lot of the time it's dictated by whether one has both a use-case and the means to implement it, and businesses have had money and a need to put things on paper for quite a while.
That being said, 3D printing is difficult and complicated, in software. Mechanically it's quite simple. A DIY-er can easily copy complicated software to use a 3D printer, but you can't easily copy complicated mechanical parts to make a 2D printer.
It makes sense if you know about the identifying marks printers add to any output.
I thought I've come across some crazy conspiracy when I first found this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
a digital watermark which many color laser printers and photocopiers produce on every printed page that identifies the specific device that was used
My solution is to do all my printing at the library. All the problems related to keeping my ink cartridge ready are now their problem.
We would absolutely love an actual open source printer you can get off the shelf parts and maybe some 3d printing and just use normal liquid ink rather than some inkjet cartridges. And no not some janky 3D printer set up to be a make shift printer, like an actual put the paper in and stuff comes out kind of printer. Prompts for a scanner and copier combo
This is the best I can find an open source printers, It uses an ancient HP black cartridge that's still in production which provides you the heads. The cartridge is pretty cheap.
https://www.instructables.com/Make-a-Handheld-InkJet-Printer-Print-on-ANY-Surfac/
The problem is the ink they use brings more to the table than just being expensive. Unless you intend on using a ballpoint pen plotter or you're going back to Dot matrix, you can't just deliver regular ink to a page. The piezo-electric nozzles need a very specific density and viscosity, It needs to dry at just exactly the right time and be able to be cleaned off the nozzle with the lightest wipe. The ink and the nozzles have 50 years of experience behind them.
Making a head go across the page with precision and high resolution is a very well solved problem, couple of steppers some electronics Legos and a 5-minute Google search you could get that part going. But you're going to have to use somebody's printheads and ink because that's well beyond DIY scope.
Can we get diy perks on this problem
You can use that kind of HP cartridge and also modify it to take ink from a reservoir. It's perfectly possible to buy ink suitable for an inkjet printer in bulk for much cheaper than HP will sell it to you, and that kind of reservoir mod will let you use the print head built in to the HP cartridge.
Sounds possible, but not feasible. Haven't researched it, but my gut feeling tells me that it would be quite expensive if it's not mass produced.
isn't there like a big difference between a printer and a 3d printer? are you really expecting one device to do both?
They are nothing alike and require wildly different mechanical systems.
There have been scattered hobbyist takes on turning a 3D printer into a plotter (a 2D vector-based type of printer) because the moving around in two dimensions a 3D printer does for each layer is the exact thing a plotter would do with a pen on a sheet of paper. Here's one such project.
ah thanks for clarifying
Omg, this made me chuckle in the best way. This is the most accurate comic I've seen in a bit. When I got an IT job, printers were so alien to me because I hadn't had one in many years. They're stupid and I hate them, but what are you gonna do.
As someone who spent most of my early IT years dealing with printers, they never get any less alien. Also, they are stupid and I hate them.
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