this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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Actually kind of a necessity.
With an inkjet, most of the 'difficult' engineering and manufacturing is in the print head. The rest is just a basic x/y bot to move the head and paper around- easy engineering and manufacturing. They use someone else's print head so they get around all that. That makes this a fairly easy design- just figure out how to trigger the cartridge nozzles when the head is in the right spot, write some code for rasterizing the image into print strips, and you're done.
With a laser, there's a lot more work. You need an entire optical system (laser, spinning mirror, etc), you need high voltage stuff to charge the drum, you need a high wattage heating coil for the fuser, etc. There's a lot more engineering and coding work involved and more manufacturing also.
yeah but they get dried out and waste ink if youre not a frequent printer
Everyone knows that, but the comment you replied to explains why anything else just isn't feasible.
An laser printer is just a reverse scanner. It's basically a resin printer with toner. We're well past those being diy doable. It's a couple of wires to deliver a charge to the drum and paper, a laser to remove the charge from the drum for the image, and a reservoir for the toner for the drum to pick up. The most complex part is the laser and mirrors for alignment, which is well into hobby diy territory.
Ok, well... we're all looking forward to you publishing the repo for an opensource laser printer then I guess.
Don't be a douche. I'm just saying it's less complex than it seems and if 3d printers can figure out open spurce, this is comparable.
Honestly, I don't really have any idea how a laser printer works beyond the basics.
However, someone has invested the time to create an opensource inkjet printer. It's a fair assumption that firstly, they know more about printers and hardware than either of us and secondly, they also know everyone prefers laser printers.
Those two assumptions lead me to the conclusion that there's a significant barrier to producing an opensource laser printer of which you're not aware.
My comment, although unnecessarily douchey, was an allusion to the age old refrain of open source enthusiasts everywhere: if the project isn't good enough for you, fork it and make your own.
thank you, representative speaking on behalf of everyone, for telling me what the comment i replied to says
what if you only shit a tiny amount of gold, and had to sift that out of daily turdage?
what percentage would still send you back into gold-panning the turds of what you ate yesterday?
these are the questions that keep me up at night.
Probably not that much I guess.
I mean if you could net $200 or so per hour of turd sifting I'd be game with the economy the way it is and all.
Yeah. I can see that.
are they nuggets/flakes or is the gold homogeneously integrated into the poo such that we'd need a furnace or centrifuge to remove it?
furnaces that hot are expensive is all. cuts into my gold profits
turd...nuggets...
finally that term has utility...
I didn't say inkjet was good. I was explaining why it is a lot easier for a hobbyist company to build an inkjet printer than a laser printer. I would absolutely love an open source laser printer. And probably buy it just on principle even though I have no need for it.
i didnt say you did. i mean yeah its sick theyre doing it, realistically you can make it work if you print something once a week or whatever. would be cool if you could do an automated print job every so often to prevent it drying (im sure this is feasible)
Necessity or not, I don't want one. I've done enough IT support to know Inkjets eat ink unless they are used every few days.