Why aren't there any Open Source laser printers?

http://www.arbitraryuser.com/blog/2011/08/05/open-source-printing/

by arbitraryuser • 15 years ago

114 56 15 years ago

masklinn2• 15 years ago

> If there was an Open Source printer and reference design for the cartridges, reputable manufacturers could build those printers and cartridges and reputable retailers could import them without fear of legal battles for a fraction of the price. Most importantly, an Open Source designed cartridge would almost certainly be designed from the ground up to be easy to refill at home.

Which apparently happens by magic.

> Open Source Hardware creates a unique ecosystem. It is naturally competitive, pushing prices down on consumables and making sure that people pay for build and print quality rather than brands.

Right. That's the theory anyway, but "for some reason" (I'm sure somebody'll find a nice conspiracy theory) there's pretty much no open-source consumer hardware.

The question is this: what's the incentive? What's the incentive for a designer to create open-source hardware (open-source software requires time and a box worth a few dozens to hundred bucks, but that's pretty much it. Open-source hardware also requires potentially expensive machines and a serious investment in materials), and what's the incentive for a "reputable manufacturer" when he already makes money hand over fist with "proprietary" hardware? Why would that manufacturer (whether he's currently legit or counterfeit) drive his whole business (especially consumables) into the ground?

yock2• 15 years ago

There's no conspiracy, it's all in the incentive.

Existing open source software was all pretty much designed to run on existing hardware. Free and open print specifications and interfaces couldn't run on existing hardware, and hardware R&D sort of requires substantial financial investment. It isn't really in the realm of your average hacker in his dimly lit home office at 3AM.

Hopefully the success of projects like Arduino will make free and open hardware standards a thing of the very near future, someday enabling us to develop complex machines using unencumbered hardware standards, but like you pointed out that just isn't today's reality.

The blog post describes an ambitious undertaking, and I think that's a good thing. It really is something that feels long overdue, given how obviously exploitive the current SOHO printing market is currently.

masklinn2• 15 years ago

> There's no conspiracy, it's all in the incentive.

That's the subject of my comment, but I'm sure somebody will assert a conspiracy by "Big Printing".

> The blog post describes an ambitious undertaking

The blog post does not describe anything, the blog post asserts that 1. somebody should design and manufacture open-source printing hardware 2. Sprinkle fairy dust, rainbows and unicorns 3. Everything is awesome

And the starting point is mostly that TFAA thinks hardware is too expensive and obtaining counterfeit consumables is a pain.

Thieum22• 15 years ago

hmm let me guess (and there's a hint in the article) ... us patents ? A quick research gives about 3757 patents concerning laser printing : http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec... . Apart from the fact that there are still efforts to be made to have the same kind of "open source" activity in the hardware world imho.

jws• 15 years ago

In 1991 I had a lovely little Apple Laserwriter IIg networked laser printer. In the intervening 20 years all of the patents covering that device will have expired.

Surely some of the subsequent patents have been related to making the printer cheaper, so that could lead to a price disadvantage, but it should be possible to make a fine patented free laser printer.

(of the many printers I've had subsequently, none have performed as well in the "paper jam" and "mysteriously hung network printer" category. The IIg was unable to reliably feed 6x8 envelopes, but other than that was perfect.)

nodata• 15 years ago

This is more a patent thing than anything to do with open source. Remove the stupid patents, get some competition.

zwischenzug• 15 years ago

Do you need a patent to build something privately?

Surely part of the point of patenting is that the solution is published?

DougBTX2• 15 years ago

It's the other way around, you'll probably need a license for something to build a printer in private. Though since there are too many patents to read, you'll likely only know if you've infringed one once you release to the public and someone sues you.

Someone2• 15 years ago

Printing is unreasonably expensive.

Huh? One can buy a laser printer for under $100, and print hundreds of pages with the included cartridge.

Also, the logic in this post would equally well apply to computers, cars, houses, pacemakers :-), whatever.

So, the main claim made here is "open source stuff is cheaper". From that, the question "why isn't everything open source?" follows. IMO, that discussion has been beaten to death multiple times.

jonknee• 15 years ago

Indeed. I would agree that inkjet printing is unreasonably expensive (for text, can't get picky for photos). Laser printers are cheap as can be.

There's a trick to stretch the starter toner cartridge too, cover the optical window with tape or black it out with a sharpie. You typically get hundreds of more pages out of it (as someone who doesn't print much, it usually lasts years).

brudgers• 15 years ago

>"Laser printers are cheap as can be."

Not when you own a HP 2605dn.

http://www.amazon.com/HP-LaserJet-Tri-Pack-Cartridges-CE257A...

And despite the fact that that is most of the purchase price of the machine when new, it does not include the black cartridge.

And yes there are alternatives, but this is the price the typical consumer sees.

ck2• 15 years ago

Samsung makes several small lasers that routinely sell for under $50 (sometimes even just $30 with rebate) at staples.

The toner is also super cheap and lasts forever.

Then for paper you do what I did, you wait for a great bogo sale on two cartons of paper and craigslist the 2nd carton to get free paper for nearly a decade.

I am not sure what an open-source printer would bring to the table unless it's to remove the yellow tracking dots in color printers which the government would probably immediately outlaw.

hsmyers• 15 years ago

A little more effort and patience to wait for paper made from newsprint. It isn't white, but who cares about that. Otherwise works just as well. Typically thinner, but lasts just as long as any of the other offerings. Watch out for paper thickness as that effects the number of pages in a ream and that effects the number of reams to the carton. Always but as much as you can afford to squeeze yet more discount out of the system.

starwed• 15 years ago

I picked up a Brother laser printer for ~$70, and it'll print thousands of pages on a single cartridge.

wzdd• 15 years ago

One of RMS's motivations for GNU was frustration at a closed-source printer driver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Decline_of_MIT...). Given the challenges involved (patents, proprietary protocols, programmer tools), you could view a quest to build the perfect printer as a microcosm of the Free Software movement.

radarsat1• 15 years ago

Actually it would seem a good idea, if someone could do this they could form a company around it, selling the printers. That's a nice aspect of open source hardware: unlike software, you can still make money off of instances.

Unfortunately it wouldn't work, because there's no way it would be able to compete price-wise with the massive economy of scale afforded by the big players in the industry.

namdnay• 15 years ago

Plus, you wouldn't be able to subsidise the up-front cost of the printer with revenue from overpriced toner

omh• 15 years ago

If the printer itself is significantly cheaper overall and the toner is cheaper then many companies would see it as the more sensible option. And you can always use financing options to spread any up-front cost out, which would probably work out cheaper in monthly charges as well.

tybris• 15 years ago

Not sure, an open source 3D printer is already cheaper than most laser printers.

tintin• 15 years ago

Probably because cheap 3D printers just melt plastic and drip it on the right spot.

I think the most sophisticated part of a laser printer is the toner. It has to stick on the drum but also on the paper at the right moment and at the right temperature. And it should stay on the paper for a long time without loosing it's tint.

Maybe they should build an open source laser cutter weak enough to just burn the surface of paper.

ori_b• 15 years ago

It's also got terrible resolution -- on the order of tens of DPI. It's slow. And it breaks down constantly. (I've heard the makerbot nicknamed the "breakerbot" thanks to it's constant failure).

Open source 3d printers are great hobbies. I love them, but they're certainly nowhere near production ready.

zwieback2• 15 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm speaking in no way for my employer, who built the laser printer in question.

We've put a generation's worth of engineering into our printers and have a huge supply chain advantage so for any price point you pick it would be very hard to build a competitive laser printer, since printer manufacturers typically take a very large loss on each unit sold.

But that's not really the question here - on my homebrew projects I usually don't try to be cost competitive, it's about the learning, fun and pride in the finished project.

I think the main reason there aren't any open source printers is that the refill/counterfeit ink and toner markets somewhat solve the problem of expensive supplies - you already get better hardware than you can build yourself and you can get cheap non-brand toner/ink.

4ad2• 15 years ago

Are you suggesting companies are losing money in the act of selling printers? I believe they are making a net profit out of every printer sold.

Edit: Look down for an explanation.

rrrazdan• 15 years ago

No he meant that Printer Companies sell the printer at a loss and then hope that cartridge/toner sales will offset that loss and some. The same way Sony sells PlayStations at a loss, recovering money from game titles and Gillette sells shaving machines at a loss, and earns profits from blades.

notatoad• 15 years ago

companies often take a loss on a product with the expectation of making it up by selling consumables for that product. google "loss leader" for more info.

bradgessler2• 15 years ago

The point of an OSS printer isn't just for cheap supplies. I'd love to hook a printer up to an email server so that I could send it PDFs and it would just print. If I had an OSS all-in-one printer, I'd probably hack the scanner to email me PDFs of documents that I scan from the ADF.

watmough• 15 years ago

There's nothing to stop you trivially scripting either of these. I expect Thunderbird or Mail can run scripts on incoming email, so you could have a printing, archiving, grepping, forwarding email account, if you liked.

kragen2• 15 years ago

> I'd love to hook a printer up to an email server so that I could send it PDFs and it would just print.

I did that in the 1990s, except I would send it PostScript files. IIRC the printer I used was some Epson dot-matrix fan-fold thingy, but I could have used anything supported by GhostScript.

gnaffle2• 15 years ago

Can anyone confirm that there are toner cartridges that stop working after a set number of pages? I thought this only applied to inkjets. My (10 year old) laser printer will happily print until the pages become unreadable - and then some more and some more after shaking the toner cartridge.

I think an open source laser printer would be an insanely cool hardware project. Although probably not cost effective due to the complexity, at least you would know exactly why the paper jams occur!

But you never know, the IP0X open source hardware project has had great success with getting chinese manufacturers to produce affordable hardware: http://www.rowetel.com/blog/?page_id=440 some of which can compete with very expensive "mainstream" offerings.

gregpilling• 15 years ago

Yes. Many printers are set to stop printing when the toner gets low. I have a Konica Minolta 2300 that does this, but there is a setting to let it keep printing even when the toner is empty. So when the colors run out, the black will keep printing until it is completely empty. There is no comparable setting for the drum. Once the machine has decided that the drum is finished, you can't print anymore.

It is worth noting that almost every printer I have installed in the last 20 years comes with the settings on 'best quality' which is code for 'use the most toner/ink'. You can often get much greater life and printing speed by changing the default settings to 'economy' or similar. Usually the only time you would notice a lack of quality would be when you print photographs. For the vast majority of printing that I do (office conditions) the quality difference is negligible. The speed and toner savings are not.

cssndrx2• 15 years ago

I can confirm that Brother printers stop working even though the toner still prints perfect pages. I couldn't believe that a company would program a functional product to suicide, so I did some searching on the subject. There used to be a hack that was possible to get Brother printers to continue printing by covering an "eye" on the printer (http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/laser/39806). However, the new Brothers (like my HL2270DW) no longer have this exploit available.

I feel that a company that would deliberately program its toner to stop functioning, is questionable on moral grounds. It is purposeful destruction of value. It hurts the environment and is wasteful.

icarus_drowning• 15 years ago

I was able to get this to work on an HL2140 last year. I just taped a small piece of construction paper over the eye on the cartridge and it happily went about printing for quite some time- I made it through an entire ream before the quality degraded. Since then, I always cover the eye on new cartridges before I insert them and use the quality of the prints, not the printer itself, to let me know when to buy more toner.

cpr• 15 years ago

Actually, a lot of the PostScript clones use GhostScript internally. (I know Epson does or did, in their lasers.) So a major part of his idea has already been done.

Back when I was involved in the laser printer business (at the beginning, in 1980, where we (Imagen, a Stanford TeX project spin-off) built the first typesetting-quality low-end laser printers), the main bugaboo was avoiding the PostScript licensing cost. (I think Adobe charged $100's of dollars per printer, depending on quantities sold.) We built a clone ourselves, but some of the big hardware manufacturers just licensed GhostScript cheaply from L. Peter Deutch. (Of Berkeley/PARC/ParcPlace fame, one of the great hackers.)

Peter first wrote GhostScript on a lark, just to see how hard it could be (not hard for him ;-), then it became serious when he realized the demand for such a product. (He released slightly older versions as OSS and licensed the bleeding-edge version commercially.)

napierzaza• 15 years ago

The proposal is that an Open Source Printer be designed and adopted by a manufacturer. Who will design the printer to be easily and cheaply refilled? So, they will basically destroy any profit they could make by building this sort of printer? And likely anyone who wants the driver will have to use the CLI or compile the driver themselves?

Sorry OSS doesn't really meet people half way on this. And for a company to remove the profit motive and make a printer that could infringe on patents for printing tech is blowing smoke.

OSS has never been very good at the last mile. So I don't see any manufacturer looking at the OSS plans and drivers and thinking that all the work is done. It's probably half done.

As the OP said, the manufactures of printers ALREADY designed their own printer. And they are making money from it. So why would they take some not entirely complete design and use that while it hollows out how they make money?

wmf• 15 years ago

I agree that in general open source hardware does not make sense. In the case of printers, though, there are a few companies like Kodak and Brother already using the "make money on the printer and don't try to make it back on toner" business model.

yason• 15 years ago

Who's printing anything much these days, by the way, unless you run some sort of a business? I'm down to maybe ten pages a year which I could do at the local library at 10 cents each if it weren't for ruthless abuse of my employer's printer. I've sometimes thought about buying one of the cheapo laser printers just to have one, but never got around to that because I just realized I haven't had a real, continued need for printing for maybe a decade.

dkersten• 15 years ago

I recently got a laser printer and use it to print circuit board layouts for etching (it needs to be toner).

The only actual paper stuff I've printed in the past year was contracts for signing and rescanning.

larrys2• 15 years ago

"smiling in disbelief that we all seem to happily pay their ridiculous prices and drink their kool-aid."

There seems to be plenty of competition and economies in printer manufacturing. As opposed to cable companies for example.

If I remember correctly the initial Apple Laserwriter or HP Laserjet cost about $8000 in today's dollars.

As others have mentioned I don't think the prices are outrageous at all. Additionally you can get a great used 65 page per minute HP printer that takes the high volume cartridges on ebay for < $350. (With postscript). (HP 4350 a great volume machine). The ink costs much less per page with the high volume machines and the used ones if properly vetted work great.

This is really ridiculous with respect to the cartridges:

"They do this purely to make money. The fact that they do this is clear evidence that they’re ripping you off."

larrys2• 15 years ago

(I mean the statement in the blog post is ridiculous)

kragen2• 15 years ago

Why do you think this statement is ridiculous?

> "They do this purely to make money. The fact that they do this is clear evidence that they’re ripping you off."

It sounds pretty ironclad to me. I think it's even been established in court cases that manufacturers put chips in toner cartridges to create planned obsolescence and prevent recycling. Are you trying to invent some hairsplitting distinction between "create planned obsolescence and prevent recycling" and "ripping you off"?

Why aren't there any Open Source laser printers?

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