Good stuff. There’s certainly no shortage of scrap parts- mainly the stepper+wormdrive combo.
I guess producing microlitre droplets (maybe less) of ink is the problem.

“We’ll ask it again, why aren’t we building our own printers?”
because unlike CNC we can pick up printer for 30$ in any pharmacy

Um… printeres are like $30. You throw them away when they break and buy a new one. Way cheaper than the parts/labour it would take to build one, and probably better quality also.

Dumb question, but still, interesting project.

Don’t throw away a printer – not only is that not environmentally friendly, but there’s all kinds of useful parts in there – I pulled out 4 motors with rotary encoders, a micropump, a couple cathode tubes, and all other kinds of fun stuff from a printer a few days ago.

I’ve been salvaging parts from printers and scanners of various ages for a number of months. To date I have broken down and 12 scanners and 15 printers.

The quality of the parts varies, with the more recent HP models (All in 1 and standalone) using very cheap DC motors and optical encoders with a high resolution encoding wheel.

You are more likely to get optical encoders in HP machines, and older scanners seem to produce steppers. I’ve got a bucket full of Mitsumi steppers that are great for little projects. Anything starting with M35 in the list: http://www.mitsumi.co.jp/latest/Catalog/compo/motor/index_e.html

The older models have some very nice stepper motors, not likely to push a router around cutting through thick bits of MDF, but enough to push a Dremmel or something higher up (Proxxon) maybe.

It is shocking to see how cheaply made the newer pieces are, but unsurprising since they cost less than a new xbox360 game.

I’ve taken ownership of a LOT of these for free using a local freecycle service, and the number of times the resevoir(??) drops its guts and shits ink everywhere, or it stops working because they shifted to Vista, let ink dry etc is shocking and very wasteful.

I’ll be very keen to see what happens with the open printer project. Thanks for sharing.

I initiated the project. Thank you too much for mentioning this. The more eyes, the more experts, the more open this can be. the 3d printer project experts have much knowledge to contribute, and I’ll certainly welcome them!

A few responses:

@Steve Holder: yes, ink cost is a primary motivating factor. Refill kits are available, but manufacturers are already producing cartridge / printer combos that auto-disable to prevent refilling. In order to create third party
replacement cartridges, you have to deal with the IP / legal departments of each
manufacturer.

You might be able to find an old printer that suits your needs, and you might
not.

@gene and gordunk:

When you buy things, there are people who get a cut of your expenditures. Taxes, plastic industries, petroleum engineers, tree cutters for the paper…you can’t entirely avoid it. Ink expenditures are a primary motivator (maybe the only one for many or most people) but others are in it for the hack, for intellectual stimulation, a chance to beat gremlins, whatever. It’s not a
failure if there’s not a market ready appliance within six months (I’m not buying any parts before June). But there will be improvements, and maybe some big manufacturers will see a threat and change their ways.

So everyone, come contribute, and thanks, Mike, for the write-up!

Don’t modern inkjet printers use very very tiny piezoelectric pumps in the cartridges to deliver small amounts of ink where needed as they fly over the paper? I could be wrong, but that sounds difficult to reproduce!
Good luck :) It’ll certainly be cool if/when it works.
<3 open source

@mooneyj:

Inkjet printers operate on the picolitre scale. The only hard thing to produce will be the print head.

i think the same as shadyman, the head is the main reason why we are not doing printers, but we could make easily a vectorial plotter; the printer head makers have clean rooms, and some rare equipment i don’t know about to make a matrix of very tiny holes, i just have no idea of how we could make a printer head in our homes.

anyway, the only reason i have a laser printer is to make PCBs, i bought for that, and i just use it for that(printing on the back part of contact paper, i can get 10mil tracks)

You CAN buy a long lasting printer for a few hundred dollars: a laser printer.

An inkjet printer and consumables is the right price if someone only uses it a few times per month, which seems about average these days.

Open design and maintainability are certainly high-sounding ideals for mouthing, but in reality hacking comes down to seeing a need and using what you have to make it happen; sometimes you use things outside their intended purpose. Other times you just use a tool.

Why aren’t we building our own mice?
Why aren’t we building our own monitors?
Why aren’t we building our own toasters?
Why aren’t we making our own toilet paper?

I’m not saying I’ll never build a printer, but if I do, it’ll be for either educational gain or for a specific purpose that normal printers can’t handle.

I for one would be rather interested in this as this would be cool if you could make any size prints on anything..

Like how now ways they have flatbed printers for t-shirts, how they print graphics on buses, imagine painting a house with a printer !??

Now that would Be awesome ?? no ??
Do a primer coat and than hook this printer up load ink and chose any of your backgrounds on your pc and print it in giant size on your wall .. IMAGINE !!!

AWSOME !!!!

If your target is 300 dpi B&W…

Dot matrix, anyone?

It’s noisy and fairly slow, but it’s damn durable, it could be assembled with simpler assembly techniques, and re-inking the ribbons is DAMN cheap.

How are you going to build the inkjet head or photo-drum in the case of a laser printer? Who is going to formulate the ink and/or toner and then distribute it? This is crazy. Buy a laser printer for less than $100 and get the toner refilled for next to nothing. You can get printing costs down to a penny or two a page less the cost of paper which in and of itself is still pretty lame – but a custom built solution isn’t going to do any better.

For the detractors..
The money doesn’t really come into this. DIY and hacking are all about getting EXACTLY what you want from the thing. Not what the manufacturer wants to sell to you.

Certainly, you can pick up a disposable printer and extortionate ink.. Very cheaply. I paid £150 for my first inkjet. I paid £40 for my current one, and it is better quality and is a far better design. Cheap third party ink means I can have a full set for under £3.

But..

Can it print directly onto a sheet of icing to decorate a cake With edible ink?

Can it print directly onto a tee shirt with washer safe ink?

Can it print etch resistant material directly onto a PCB ready for a ferric chloride bath? Or even better. Lay down some kind of conductive base tracks that could be electroplated on? No more dangerous chemicals to use and dispose of.

And those are just a few ideas off the top of my head.

My of the shelf printer can print CDs and DVDs. Very useful feature, but I wish it could do more.

Your $25 junk after empty printer still only prints on paper, and contributes to the landfill problem… A scratch built open printer could do so much more so cheaply.
And why stop there. Haven’t you ever wished you could print directly onto non flat non paper objects? Make massive wall covering prints?

A DIY desktop printer is a tool. And if the tool can be made better, or more versatile with a few modifications, isn’t that worth the effort?

The only real barrier is the print head. And once someone figures that out, the sky is the limit.

Hi :)
Here is the prototype of my thermal printer:

And here is the nearly finished SMD version:
http://plaputta.de/printer/printer.jpg

Toby

Why do I get the feeling that the only people who would seriously consider a homebuilt inkjet are the same people who say dumb shit like “I only eat opensource bagels”?

I think the griefers are missing the point. Sure, it makes no economic sense to build a printer, but as a hobby, why not?

There are people who build their own cars. Sure, they could buy a car cheaper, but dude, THEY BUILT THEIR OWN CAR. Sometimes the experience of doing something and the skills you develop doing it is reason enough. No need to rationalize it further.

@urg

that’s what i’m thinking. i doubt i’d consider buying/building an ‘open’ printer. there are just too many questions to consider that nearly all will be answered favoring the ‘closed’ printer. i wonder what the true cost of ownership of the ‘open’ printer will be. i can understand doing an ‘open’ printer as a fun personal project, but that’s about it.

i have tried ‘opensource bagels’ and haven’t been consistently impressed with my experience, but that hasn’t turned me away from my 4+ year experimentation.

@ORV – Probably a very bad example, seeing as how I -HAVE- built my own car, among other things.

You see, I’m not attacking the idea of a printer or anything else, I’m attacking the silly justifications I see here.

I built a car for the hell of it, to learn, and to have something unique. That’s all. Totally selfish on my part, and it in no way can be considered even close to superior in any real performance metric to a manufactured car. It isn’t. In fact its inefficient and unreliable.
However, I am not pompous enough to try to justify my builds with inflated and pompous claims about corporatism, opensource, saving the world, oligarchys, or whatever.

If you want to build a printer for the hell of it, do it. Jut don’t try to pass it off as anything other than a pointless vanity project. Just like my car.
If its fun, do it. Just don’t try to convince us how the morally superior and open-minded super-enlightened being you are is somehow saving the fucking world. That’s just complete bullshit.

Couldn’t you just combine some Xerox type solid ink with a RepRap with a spray function instead of an extrude function?

Actually I was advocating a pressurized nozzle that prints small bubbles or droplets much like an inkjet printer.

@tehgringe
“and it is better quality and is a far better design.” Not true. Simply not true. The older printers are built like fucking tanks, weigh about the same as a tank, and actually use serious pieces of hardware to drive the thing.

Agreed as far as build quality. Older ones were built to last in many cases. But not what I was referring to. My old printer was lower resolution, used one black and one 3 colour cartrige, slower, and only printed flat sheet media.
Current printer is higher resolution, has 6 individual ink cartridges, prints disks. In my book, better more capable equipment. And to be honest.. Build quality is about the same. My old one was a domestic grade printer too. And not that old. From about ten years ago, when the first domestic ink jets were coming on the market.

But something I was wondering.. Does the maker actually need to make the print head from scratch? Why not cannibalise the head from an existing printer? Especially the disposable ones. And if all that is done by any central project is provide the information to do the job, what could the printer manufacturer do? Nobody is stealing the printers. Nobody is selling their product out from under their feet, because the printer is not the profit making product. So no problem really. And I haven’t heard about Epson coming after the people that make that program to reset the cleaning cycle counter yet. Even though it does cut into sales.

There is no such thing as a printer that does not drive you crazy.

When did Epson start making Xeron 9700′s?
I asked google a few ways, but did not find the secret…Just curious. I just bought a new printer and was thinking, it will do until I can afford a 9700 and an operator to go with it.