Link: https://www.opentools.studio/fr

Open source printer with refillable ink, no bullshit, accept rolls of papers.

Finally an open source printer !
I dealt with so much stupidity with printers. it warm my heart.

I do have too much joy to practice mandatory critical thinking about the release of a new project.
Lets talk about it? i am not the only one to be happy about it, i have no info about the price though :/

Slight open-washing involved though - the license is CC-By-NC-SA, which sadly makes it incompatible with open hardware projects, and restricted from being available as a pre-assembled kit.

Certainly a cool idea, and I hope it succeeds and turns out to be what it seems.

No price listed on their crowd fund page, so who can say what this might cost? Uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W for the brains and a STM32 for the cartridge board.

Well you are right !
Still i see it as a massive positive win in this particular sector, but sure, lets see what happen and be greedy with licensing! May the next one/release/update be more open.

I thank you a lot

They do have a survey that includes the kit question.

Here is the link if you are interested: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc0MLIj1Mfv81vaiOIQG1yMEilruRfNgx7h36l5a0qC-G9TZw/viewform

From this update :
https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/openprinter/updates/on-the-road-to-launch

While I understand why are they unwilling to allow commercial usage of the final product, it also makes it difficult to actually put in the hands of people. I agree, hopefully they can reconsider for a later iteration.

creative commons doesn't even recommend their licenses be used for software (it's in their faq). i'm guessing the same would apply to hardware designs as well.

If it's not really FOSS, It's just an attention grabbing, open washing failure in progress, sponsored by people who don't understand the licensing implications.

I do understand your passion and i respect your disappointment.

While i understand the explicit implications of cc-by-nc-sa, (attribution, non-commercial,share alike) i fail to understand the implicits implications.
Could i trouble you to explain it ?

i do enjoy the fact they're repurposing hp cartridges. but if this printer thing actually grabs some traction, i can totally see hp EOLing every printer that uses them and ending new production of those cartridges.

In the linked survey they're talking about selling an ink kit. With that, the non-commerical license meaning nobody but them can sell spares, and them filing a patent, it's almost like they're just trying to start another printer company and just using the open source community to do advertising 🫠

Aren’t printers pretty restricted due to needing to have surveillance and anti-counterfeit features? Is this legal at scale?

I think the feds just asked printer manufacturers nicely

I think the criticism is that it's less likely to build an ecosystem like a Gnu Public License would (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RepRap for an example of a 3d printer that very successfully used the GPL). The CC license prevents large corporations from stealing the design. But it also prevents someone from 3D-printing parts and selling them on a small ebay store.

Seeing the dissembled printer makes me want it regardless of license tbh

I think you're misinterpreting - the thing needs ink one way or another, and the kit suggested in the image is just a standard ink refill kit. They're just asking if people want them to provide that, or if they want to get it elsewhere - I selected elsewhere.

I don't actually know but I imagine it's all voluntary. It seems like kind of an endless tail chase to constantly limit anything that could feasible be used to commit a crime. Actual counterfeiting with any success requires some pretty specialized shit. Honestly if this printer could be configured to meet those specifics them more power to them. End of the day though I wouldn't imagine this being the gateway to massive expansions in the counterfeit market.

Creative Commons does not have any guidelines about using their licenses for hardware. It would still be a better idea to use CERN-OHL for hardware though.

The counterfeit features from my understanding are just matching one simple dot pattern. That could be included in the firmware here as well.

Thanks ;) I learned something!

What it means though is that nobody in the community can sell upgrades to the printer, sell spare parts, or, and by far most importantly, nobody can develop a fully open source printhead for this printer to sell.

Right now they are using a proprietary print head from a normal printer (understandably because it is by far the most complex engineering piece and is very complicated). However, an external team that wants to make an open hardware project taking on that engineering challenge with more expertise than this team will not be able to be compensated for their work if they make it specifically for this open source printer. According to my understanding of the license.

I'm not an expert in those legal fingerprints, but i can imagine that you might need a parent even if you want to open source it, simply so nobody else can patent it. on the other hand, in right now to lazy/sleepy to read the article, so don't mind me :)

Now do a laser printer

No more frustrating blockages like: "Cannot print in black because the yellow is empty."

I think they're trying to seduce me

I'm waiting for a machine to appear with an operating system with an source code, it would be funny

HP 63 et HP 63 XL (US)

HP 302 et HP 302 XL (Europe)

HP 803 et HP 803 XL (Asie)

And the ink they use is cheap/available internationally.

I also think that one can refill these with regular ink bottles from amazon/aliexpress

The hardware is pretty trivial. The cartridges, which are the most problematic part are HP.
This is so underwhelming.

Maybe by then openprinter would have migrated to their ink standard and started producing it. Old models' ink cartridges can still be refilled but not changed.

That's not how patents work. If you open source something, it will count as prior art if someone else tries to patent the same thing.

it's still a good start . Also aftermarket cartridges exists.

I'm interested. Any info on how much it will cost?

The perfect color for a printer doesnt exi...

oh, and also they offer refill kits.

Lemme tell you it is working

HP carts have the printhead included, disposable, so quality will degrade fast with refilling. Epson/brother and some Canon have permanent printheads which will last orders of magnitude longer. If the cart/printhead is still going to be propietary, epson/brother printheads, which are readily available, and which can be setup pretty easily in a CISS configuration would have been way better. The project is really bad. The fact that they use paper rolls is also dumb. Are you really going to cut every single sheet? Rolls make sense for large format printing. Epson/brother with aftermarket CISS are the way to go, especially because you can get actual Epson ink in bottles for refilling, the ones used in their ecotank line, super cheap.

Unless you’re printing receipts in A4 width or some shit, who the hell wants to print on roll paper

Because it van print A4 ans A3 without too much mechanics

Finally a real answer haha, had to scroll awhile.

So the licensing thing is just mostly people complaining that it isnt the most truiest of openness since people tend to conflate floss with accessibility when people call it open and they mean accessibility.

Still getting a reliable printer that I can fix that I'm not vendor locked by that does all the things I could want a printer to do, since this was their goal I'm glad its happening.

Still doesn't atop them from regulating 3d printers like crazy

In their discord server the open printer staff said they explicitly aren't including thst kind of stuff.

What is actually bad about this other than it being new to you?

Not yet hopefully soon

LETS GOOOOOO I have a small print shop and I only use Linux and it SUCKS

It’s not new. It’s old.

I guess none of you are old enough to remember fax machines. There’s a reason we got rid of roll paper, it fucking sucks

Doesn't that happen because of legal requirements? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots

OK, that's kind of a big deal

I'm not saying it is new technology I am saying new to you, who now says you have used it before.

What is actually bad about this? From my experience the curl is at worst a barely noticeable affect on the paper and is less of an issue if you go through paper quick, for the people that don't care you can use flat sheets for this printer as well.

ok, as i said I'm unfamiliar with this topic, so I'm happy about some inside.

how do you proof that you open sourced something before somebody patented it? i mean a parent is registered at some authority. is it sufficient to refer to your, e.g., GitHub history?

Curious how 3D beat 2D by, what, 10 years?

Fuck NC.

I don't think that's a legal requirement. Many printers don't do MICs.

Those regulations are silly. It doesn't stop you from using your 3D printer to print a 3D printer that has no restrictions

The limits imposed by the license will harm adoption, I hope I'm wrong but there will be no community around this. It will most likely be DOA. Which is a shame... The AGPL would better protect his interests.