Interesting comment from last time this was posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48093670

Inkjet printing requires orders of magnitude more engineering expertise, materials science, industry experience and financial resources than most people imagine. That is the reason, open inkjet printers don't exist despite having been consumer products with the same drawbacks for more than forty years. That is why this is a pre-crowdfund landing page without a demonstrating a working prototype. I would like to be wrong, but I expect you to be waiting a long time. An inkjet printer is not a collection of off the shelf parts. It is a machine that operates at the edge of chemistry, fluid dynamics, and electro-mechanical design...you have to place tiny tiny drops of liquid ink on commodity wood pulp with precision under arbitrary environmental conditions, get that ink to dry on the wood pulp, but not in tank or nozzel, while producing acceptable color, durability, and ease of use. Also lawyers...there are patents.

I noticed that previous post is from a couple of months ago, and it looks like about a week ago they posted a project update and they claim for their current prototype: "We are successfully printing in both black and full color." https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer/updates/...

Of course I have no way of verifying either way. Still I do think the project looks quite interesting, I'm in the market for a printer and this is certainly the most interesting one I've seen in a while.

On the technology side, I'm somewhat hopeful because it looks like they're using off-the-shelf HP ink cartridges for this. HP cartridges embed the printhead into the cartridge itself, and that printhead is arguably the most complicated part of the entire device. Outsource the printhead, and you're just designing a plotter with a PCL interface.

I agree that the bigger challenge is going to be patents.

It also wouldn't surprise me to see HP add DRM to cartridges to authenticate the printer itself if this catches on. (Possibly requiring a printer driver/firmware update.)

The fact the campaign is run on crowdsupply makes me a lot more hopeful it'll get to market vs a site like kickstarter. Crowdsupply requires a working prototype before launching and they provide all the expertise to actually get projects to market, off the top of my head I don't believe any crowdsupply project has failed to deliver.

I have enormous respect for dot matrix printers. They're easy to repair and service, the tech is relatively simple, it's cheap, it's parts are cheap, its supplies are cheap. It's way more sustainable than any other printer: both the printer itself in its manufacturing and the ribbons themselves. The waste they produce is also much less polluting than any other printer.

99% of this is the printhead and the ink formulation. Assuming you use generic off the shelf solutions for those two components you’re set. All the printer companies do their lock in at the firmware and software layer.

From the specs:

  Compatible cartridges  
  HP 63 and HP 63 XL (US)
  HP 302 and HP 302 XL (Europe)
  HP 803 and HP 803 XL (Asia)

It really makes more sense to just buy a laser printer, in almost all cases.

That's why this is just using off the shelf cartridges with commercial heads.

Try to find an typical consumer inkjet printer on AliExpress, you won't find any, or if you do, it will be someone reselling the usual brands like HP or Canon. You will find label printers, industrial printers, 3D printers, thermal printers, and all sorts of weird stuff, but none of them able to put ink on a stack of A4 paper.

If the Chinese, who are known for being able to make knockoffs of everything are not able to make inkjet printers, this should tell you how hard it is.

It addition to the print head, reliable paper transport is also really hard. That problem is often sidestepped by using a paper roll or by printing one sheet at a time, as it is the case for the Openprinter.

The second part is verbose but say absolutely nothing of the difficulty and issues. It could be applied to anything, even cooking a steak

An open source all-in-one-printer would be a great device to have. For eg I would love to have the scanner include a camera. So I can get “instant scans” most of the time, and a higher res scan when needed. Maybe the camera could also notice when the person making copies or scans forgot their original and ping them?

isn't inkjet an outdated tech by now?