[HN Gopher] Inkjets are for more than just printing
___________________________________________________________________
Inkjets are for more than just printing
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 156 points
Date : 2024-03-25 23:00 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| kstrauser wrote:
| It's true! I dropped one out of my 2nd story window onto a hard
| drive I needed to sanitize, and it did a nice job of it.
| teeray wrote:
| They're great at cleaning out your wallet too!
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| > While laser printers do the big printing jobs in commercial
| settings, the inkjet printer has become the printer most of us
| use at home and at the office.
|
| I don't know who "most of us" is, but I had to check the year it
| was published because this is so wrong for everyone I know, home
| or office.
|
| Black and white laser printers are price competitive with color
| inkjet printers in the short and long term for home or small
| office use. Most people don't need color, or if they do, inkjet
| is slow and low quality and more expensive than retail print
| shops for things like photos or full page flyers.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I splurged on a color laser. It's brilliant and cheap for
| printing color documents. It's also really bad at printing
| photos.
|
| Know what's great for printing photos? The Walgreens up the
| block. It prints them waaaaayyyy more cheaply and nicely than
| any inkjet I've ever owned. The 2 times a year I want to frame
| and hang up a nice photo, I upload it to them and then walk
| over an hour later to pick it up.
|
| There's no plausible reason I'd ever buy an inkjet again.
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| If you found Walgreens quality satisfactory, I'd definitely
| recommend checking out dedicated Photo Print websites (eg.
| bayphoto.com). They are much better than Walgreens and only
| slightly more expensive.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Thanks for the link. The main thing going for Walgreens for
| me is that there's one a quick walk around the block away
| from me. If it were less convenient I'd be more
| exploratory.
| richardw wrote:
| I've wondered why email to print to post isn't a bigger
| thing.
| kstrauser wrote:
| We're quite spoiled by instantcy, aren't we? There's
| usually no rush when I go to do such things.
| benmanns wrote:
| If you need same day/local service, I've found our local
| Walmart to be cheaper and much higher quality than the
| Kodak kiosk inside the local CVS stores. Not sure how
| Walgreens compares.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| > It's also really bad at printing photos.
|
| Yours in particular or generally laser printers? If the last
| one, that sounds surprising
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > If the last one, that sounds surprising
|
| Is it? Soho color laser printers are calibrated and
| designed to print color documents, not photos. They use
| CMYK (4) colors and inkjets designed for photos use 6 or
| more. It's possible to do photos with it but generally the
| laser printers _most_ people have are not really designed
| for high quality photo (where a cheaper inkjet would be),
| they will show banding and be less color accurate.
| lupire wrote:
| Inkjets use 6 colors? I've never seen that at consumer
| retail. I see 3 color plus black.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| They can, yes. Here's a HP doc on 5 color ones with photo
| cartridge that are fairly common:
| https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01839024
|
| Light cyan and light magenta are usually the additional
| colors added https://www.macworld.com/article/152010/6ink
| hetprinters.html
|
| There are 7 color printers from Epson that add a dilute
| black.
| massysett wrote:
| Bad at printing photos for framing, sure.
|
| It's perfectly good for photos for elementary-school projects
| though.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Sure is! The end results are recognizable as what they're
| supposed to be, just not beautiful. That's fine 95% of the
| time I want to print a photo.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I sort of swore a blood oath that I would never buy
| another ink jet printer 10 years ago because one of my color
| cartridges dried up, and it wouldn't let me even print black
| and white, despite the fact that the black and white cartridge
| appeared to be fine.
|
| Replacing the color cartridge was like $70. Instead of fixing
| this problem, I threw the ink jet away, and found a used
| Samsung ML-2010 on ebay for $60. It prints documents just fine,
| the only things I ever bother printing are forms that I have to
| sign.
|
| Now I have a 15 year old HP office printer, also only black and
| white, and I genuinely like it. If I ever need to print color
| for whatever reason, I'll walk to one of the print shops a few
| blocks from me. It's not worth keeping a full color printer in
| my house that will work exactly once.
| II2II wrote:
| After avoiding inkjet printers for some 30 years, I purchased
| a colour inkjet printer after comparing the cost per page to
| a colour laser. Granted, I went for a tank based (rather than
| cartridge based) printer. Will I be happy with the decision
| 10 years down the road (which is the age of my current laser
| printer)? I have no idea. But the point is that you can avoid
| the cartridge based inkjets and get something where you
| refill the colours according to your needs.
|
| I also suspect that some of the applications mentioned in the
| article aren't using the built-to-a-price-point inkjet
| printers. Quality varies. Sometimes you have to check the
| reviews and pay a bit more for that quality.
| tombert wrote:
| Which model did you get?
| LoganDark wrote:
| I don't know if this is what they purchased, but EcoTank
| is a good term to search for if you want an inkjet that
| won't charge you an arm and a leg for proprietary
| cartridges. The basic idea is that instead of swappable
| cartridges, they just have ink tanks that you top up from
| a squirt bottle. These bottles are cheaper than any
| cartridge while containing like ten times the amount of
| ink.
| II2II wrote:
| I ended up getting an Epson EcoTank printer (ET-4850).
| Specifications claim to have 7500 page (black) and 6000
| page (cym) yields, which is around what I would expect
| for a similarly priced monochrome laser printer. The ink
| itself costs about 1/2 of that for toner a similarly
| priced monochrome laser printer (black only, verses all
| four bottles). Colour lasers are more expensive for
| supplies.
|
| Would I recommend it? No idea. I'm still new to the
| inkjet printer market. I'm sure hiccups will pop up along
| the way. On the other hand: it works in Linux, is quiet,
| and the lights don't dim when it comes to life. (It is
| also worth mentioning that it is more of a document
| printer than a photo printer.)
| throwanem wrote:
| I happened to pick up the same model a little while back,
| to replace an HP that died after most of a decade of good
| service - Instant Ink's an amazingly _good_ deal, if you
| use it for photos, but I wanted something I could easily
| use better than stock inks in.
|
| The resolution is reasonable, though the default color
| settings produce a blue cast (vs. both on-screen
| rendering and my Pixma Pro 100, as well as the HP it
| replaced) that I haven't figured out how to reliably
| prevent yet. As a photographer this irks me greatly,
| enough so that I won't print my own work on it until the
| problem is solved; others may not care.
|
| It tends to go into deep sleep and need a poke to start
| listening to the network again, which is annoying when it
| lives with the other printers in the attic. I work around
| this with a homelab cron job that curls the printer's
| admin web interface once a minute.
|
| Other than that it's been solid thus far, though
| admittedly I've only had it a few months. Certainly it'll
| be a while before I need to refill it.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| I got a couple of laser printers for 50 bucks and when they ran
| out of ink I just toss them and get another. Inkjet printers
| are rubbish.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Are the inkjet or laser printers rubbish in this scenario?
| Sounds like you're constantly replacing the laser ones
| sys_64738 wrote:
| No they're pretty good but I don't print much anymore. Dell
| laser printer is eight years old and still using original
| toner cartridge.
| lupire wrote:
| Laser printers don't have ink, and almost never run out of
| toner, and the toner is cheap. Why on earth would you toss
| them?
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Toss is probably the wrong word. Added to the e-Waste pile
| in my basement.
| lmm wrote:
| If you just want to occasionally print out concert tickets /
| photocopy id documents / etc., half-assing it by getting a that
| only does black and white is the worst of both worlds - better
| to either save the space by not owning a printer at all, or
| avoid ever having to go to a print shop by having a printer
| that can do colour when you need it. If you're actually
| printing out a lot of documents then yeah laser makes sense,
| but I've never understood the HN home laser dogma.
| tverbeure wrote:
| I almost never print, but when I do I don't want to struggle
| with an inkjet printer that has dried up nozzles. A $140
| Brother laser printer will pretty much work for the rest of
| your life.
| Liftyee wrote:
| This anecdotally holds up, at least for Brother laser
| printers made in the 2010's. Over a decade later it's still
| working perfectly. Granted I do have to nudge a mechanical
| part back into place every year, but the service manual is
| so good that maintenance is near-trivial.
| lmm wrote:
| I've been using inkjets for decades and never had this
| "dried up nozzles" problem, shrug.
| lupire wrote:
| Do you print at least weekly?
| xmprt wrote:
| Yup. I was on the laser printer is the best printer train
| until I actually had to buy a printer for my home (until then
| I was printing from the college lab or office). I quickly
| realized that a laser printer made no sense for the reasons
| you outlined.
| culopatin wrote:
| I don't understand the reasons the person you replied to or
| you are making references to. You rather having to go print
| every little thing just because once a year you want it to
| be color? What most people print at home must be Amazon
| return labels, some school papers and resumes which are all
| black and white. If you're in college reading lots of
| papers with graphs in color you can easily print at school.
|
| I got so tired of being asked by friends and family to help
| them with their shit inkjet printers that I'll never ever
| touch one again. I don't even know when I would HAVE to
| print color but if I must, and I'm not working in an
| office, I'll just go to any store near me and get it done.
| The laser is painless 99% of the time, where the inkjet is
| pain 99% of the time.
|
| Before I moved across the country I donated my brother
| laser printer to the least tech savvy aunt in the family
| that could NEVER print and I have not heard of a single
| printing issue in almost a year. Where it was always always
| something. "Some" cartridge failed, not even 20% used.
| Didn't say which one to make you change both. Change one,
| pray, if you're lucky it works. A week later, black one
| fails. Or they get clogged, or they need to clean the
| whatever, which uses 10% of the ink. Such shit I can't
| believe there isn't a mass lawsuit against this.
| lmm wrote:
| > I don't understand the reasons the person you replied
| to or you are making references to. You rather having to
| go print every little thing just because once a year you
| want it to be color? What most people print at home must
| be Amazon return labels
|
| If you're returning a package you've got to go somewhere
| to drop off the package anyway, so may as well print the
| label there.
|
| > some school papers and resumes which are all black and
| white. If you're in college reading lots of papers with
| graphs in color you can easily print at school.
|
| Again that sounds like like you're getting the worst of
| both worlds. If you're going to go to the trouble of
| getting a printer so you can print off papers, you want
| to be able to print off all your papers, not just the
| ones that don't have graphs in. If you're just going to
| print them at school why wouldn't you print them all at
| school including the black-and-white ones?
|
| (FWIW a CV where I live is expected to have a colour
| photo embedded)
| lupire wrote:
| You live somewhere with different tradeoffs. Here we have
| more mail drops without printing stations attached, and
| out jon applications are less explicitly racist and
| sexist.
| lagt_t wrote:
| You can print concert tickets and photocopy ids in black and
| white, I don't understand your point. Noone requires color
| for those use cases.
| lmm wrote:
| I've had cases where colour was required e.g. one of my ID
| stamps was unreadable in black-and-white, my tax return
| form has colour sections (might have been accepted in
| black-and-white but was certainly clearer in colour)...
| kstrauser wrote:
| I absolutely 100% guarantee that you can submit tax forms
| printed in black and white. I suspect the IRS is more
| surprised when they see printed forms that are anything
| but.
| lmm wrote:
| Not the IRS (whatever that is), was a bank, and they
| absolutely reacted positively to it being in colour as an
| original.
| kstrauser wrote:
| An original what?
|
| Thing is, I also own a color scanner. It's just as easy
| for me to make a color copy of a doc as a B/W copy.
| That's pretty common now. If your bank thinks that a form
| with red lines on it must be an original, then they suck
| at technology more than most banks.
| lmm wrote:
| > An original what?
|
| An original tax return form.
|
| > If your bank thinks that a form with red lines on it
| must be an original, then they suck at technology more
| than most banks.
|
| Be that as it may, I don't have a banking license and
| wasn't about to turn my nose up at a bank that finally
| let me open a corporate account after about 4 months of
| effort.
| lupire wrote:
| Lots of banks still require signatures in blue ink.
| kstrauser wrote:
| SMH. I use blue ink because I like it, but the idea of
| that being a validator amuses me.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _...I 've never understood the HN home laser dogma._
|
| It's not really a mystery -- if your main use case is
| documents (b&w or color), a laser printer is generally a
| better choice. If your main use case is photos and
| photographic imagery (like for stickers), you still need to
| go inkjet.
|
| My daily driver for the last 7 years has been a Brother color
| laser, but this year I replaced it with an Epson ET-8500
| inkjet because my needs had changed.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I have the same HP b&w laser that I bought used for $90
| circa 2004. Same toner cartridge.
|
| Meanwhile my parents have been through roughly a half dozen
| inkjets in the same time.
|
| It's pretty obvious which is better for _most_ home use
| cases.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Mainly because lasers _always_ work. You can ignore one for a
| year, then turn it on to print something and it'll greet you
| like a Labrador retriever seeing you get home from work.
|
| I've never had that experience with any inkjet, however
| expensive. If I don't use one for several months, it's always
| a flip of the coin whether it'll work without draining half
| the tank in self-cleaning cycles.
|
| Lasers are just vastly more reliable than inkjets. I can
| always count on my laser waking up and printing before
| falling back into a coma. I can't trust any inkjet.
| lmm wrote:
| > I've never had that experience with any inkjet, however
| expensive. If I don't use one for several months, it's
| always a flip of the coin whether it'll work without
| draining half the tank in self-cleaning cycles.
|
| Shrug. I've used boring consumer HP/Canon/Epsom inkjets and
| never had a problem. I think the first printer my parents
| ever had 20 years ago occasionally needed to print a test
| page, but I haven't had that happen since then.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I don 't know who "most of us" is..._
|
| Meaning, ~75% of us (see pages 14-16):
| https://o1.rtcdn.net/uploads/2022/04/Issue123EN2205-V4.pdf
| lupire wrote:
| The article says that 75% of pages printed in home/office
| desktop is _laser_ (the blue segment of the pie).
|
| I suspect most of us printer owners own inkjets, but people
| who print a lot of pages use laser, while inkjets are
| decorative after terrible experience with the first
| cartridge.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _The article says that 75% of pages printed in home
| /office desktop is_ laser _(the blue segment of the pie)._
|
| Thank you, you're right -- this supports the parent
| commenter's point for the combined business and home
| markets. I wasn't able to find any data on the breakdown
| for the home market specifically, but based on my social
| circle I'd guess COVID/remote work significantly increased
| home laser purchases.
|
| > _...while inkjets are decorative after terrible
| experience with the first cartridge._
|
| Having bought an inkjet after a two-decade "only laser/LED"
| rule, tank/CISS ink is making inkjets nice again. Still, I
| wouldn't recommend an inkjet if you (1) never intend to
| print photos/images or (2) regularly go more than a month
| without printing.
| malfist wrote:
| It starts out claiming that 1980s offices were more noisy than
| today, but I don't know that that is true. We don't even have
| cubicles anymore. You're lucky if your team and seven others
| aren't sharing the same conference table "open office" space.
| II2II wrote:
| Those old hammer printers were loud. Commercial printers were
| often housed in cases with sound-deadening materials, even
| though they usually occupied a room dedicated to computers
| (with the offices having terminals). Workers in smaller offices
| and personal computer users often had to put up with the
| relatively loud high-pitched drone of dot-matrix printers,
| though some would get enclosures to deaden the sound.
|
| Even if open offices somehow manage to be louder, it is an
| entirely different quality of noise.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| I interned at a stodgy 80s-style company in the 90s (I'm sure
| the office was exactly the same as the decade before). It was
| nice actually, compared to my "modern" office. The printers
| and copiers were in different places so they generally
| weren't bothersome if you were at your desk. The main noise
| annoyances were 1) telephones ringing sometimes--those old
| phones were loud, and 2) neighboring workers talking. They
| didn't have separate cubicles, but rather cubicle walls were
| used to separate workgroups from each other. I guess 3)
| computer keyboards were noisy back then, but at this place
| most workers didn't have computers at their desks yet.
|
| Peak quietness for offices was, in my experience, in the late
| 90s or early 2000s. Everyone had separate cubicles with
| sound-absorbing walls. I really miss those days.
|
| Of course, everyone's experiences will be different.
| Different companies had different office layouts, though
| there definitely have been clear trends.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Offices at the office. With walls, and doors that shut, and
| sometimes even windows that opened.
|
| They were relatively easy to find up until the late 90s
| when I stopped "going in"; maybe if people want to fill
| their expensive commercial real estate you all can convince
| the suits to bring them back?
| lupire wrote:
| I can still remember the screech of a 1980s/early 1990s dot
| matrix printer.
| kazinator wrote:
| That's all nice; it's still incredibly stupid to buy consumer
| inkjets for home or office use. They are garbage.
|
| Inkjets produce nicer pictures than toner-based printers (LED,
| Laser) at great expense and hassle. You're better off using an
| online service for bulk printing of pictures.
|
| For document printing, they completely lose to toner-based. They
| are slow. They have to be used regularly or they dry up, which is
| a hassle to fix and perhaps cannot be.
|
| I can ignore my LED printer for weeks or months, and be confident
| that when I need to count on it to print something, it will
| print.
|
| Also, to begin with, inkjet cartridges are tiny compared to
| toner, and most of the content is the liquid carrier. Toner is
| 100% solids, and the cartridges are much larger.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Inkjets produce nicer pictures than toner-based printers
| (LED, Laser) at great expense and hassle._
|
| Tank-based printers have changed this equation a lot, FWIW. I
| haven't seen a cartridge-based printer that I'd recommend.
| kazinator wrote:
| I see. Right; I'm vaguely aware of those things through
| passive exposure to ads. I've mostly written off inkjets, so
| my attention has been minimal. Refillable, big tanks do make
| a difference. If that's the deal breaker for someone, they
| may be worth another look.
| BMc2020 wrote:
| Basically if it's a liquid you can inkjet it. (basically each
| nozzle has a chamber with a tube leading into it and a hole in
| the top. A resistor heater boils the drop and it spits out the
| hole).
|
| I always wondered if anyone ever tried to make a fuel injector
| out of one. (the finer the mist you can make your gasoline, the
| better it combusts).
|
| Source: I looked at thousands of these things under a microscope
| at a company that makes lots of them. 0/10 would not recommend.
| samstave wrote:
| I wonder if you could make a really good fuel injected motor
| utilizing these for RC/Drone engines.
|
| An RC/drone I think that would be neat would be a 'diesel
| electric' (not diesel) - but a motor utilizing this for
| injecting into a generator for a gas-electric helicopter. Like
| a Chinook where the interior is the gas-electric generator, but
| the overall design modeled after the Chinook given that its the
| Heavy Lifter of Helos with a payload lift capacity of ~20
| tons.?
|
| --
|
| In the late 1990s I worked at a company who manufactured a lot
| of the physical media for various software/games/OS
| (Intuit/Everquest/SunOS for example)
|
| We manufatered the CDs, copy, manuals, boxes, etc - boxed and
| shipped it...
|
| All the CDs were printed using Brother inkjets.
|
| My buddy was a fairly famous DJ in the rave scene in the 90s -
| so in my off hours we would make and print his CDs...
|
| dj morgan...
|
| I designed and printed these logos onto CDs in the 90s
|
| https://i.imgur.com/6VUWeQN.png
|
| (I actually designed the Decepticon Logo in circuitry when I
| worked at Intel - but we lost the artwork, and that was the
| cover - the CD was printed with the logo as drawn in circuit
| traces and was pretty bad ass for the 90s scene...)
| simne wrote:
| For engine injector need high pressure. In automobile direct
| injector used 20 layers of piezoelectric plates to achieve
| this, and sure, high voltage applied.
| regularfry wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I've come across piezos on inkjet printers
| too. Can't remember the make, but resistive heating is only
| one way to get the ink to go splat.
| simne wrote:
| May be idea to boil drop, or even partially evaporate. So I
| think, thermo-sublimation process definitely works with
| heating.
| qq66 wrote:
| Also, products like Irrigreen (https://irrigreen.com/) which uses
| inkjet technology to "print" an exact pattern of water onto a
| lawn, avoiding sprinkler overlap.
|
| (Note: am investor)
| lagniappe wrote:
| Outside of states with high water usage cost, what is the pitch
| for Irrigreen?
| nine_k wrote:
| The few states with high cost of water, like California or
| Texas, can be enough of a market.
|
| BTW since they have basically a positioned spray technology,
| they could literally "print" things with grass, giving it
| different nutrients or even dispersing different seeds.
| Anything from a decorative striped pattern to signs of
| affiliation and slogans.
| getwiththeprog wrote:
| That is a great idea.
|
| But does it really use "inkjet" technology? It looks like an
| adjustable rate pump with a timing or orientation chip, mapped
| with an app.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| https://www.crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com/kill-your-lawn
| ay wrote:
| I don't know if both authors being affiliated with HP Labs is a
| coincidence or a sign of a conflict of interest... But the
| article kinda reads like a desperate last-ditch promo for the
| inkjets.
|
| I haven't had an inkjet for 30 years - only black and white
| lasers. Starting with HL LaserJet 5L in 2000, then Samsung and
| now Brother (yay for their nice platform independence so they
| work on Linux).
|
| My Prusa 3D is also arguably spewing a material into a surface so
| I guess yeah, maybe I should count it as an inkjet as well,
| though ;-)
| Liftyee wrote:
| With all the anti-consumer DRM shenanigans HP is trying these
| days (see: Instant Ink), I wouldn't be surprised if that was
| the case.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Ugh, yeah my household has an instant ink subscription and
| it's such an obvious scam.
| jmspring wrote:
| HP Labs != HP corporate
| hughesjj wrote:
| Hp labs \subset HP corporate
| jmspring wrote:
| Researchers have different priorities to what corporate does.
| albru123 wrote:
| Seems like the point of this article missed a lot of people
| entirely, since they are so fixated on consumer inkjet
| printers. That's a very specific case of inkjet printing, but
| inkjet technology is way more than that.
|
| For example continuous inkjet printers are used to label
| packages of many items you buy every day. There's also research
| about inkjet printing wearable electronics etc. None of which
| has a lot to do with HP.
| isametry wrote:
| Thank you for making this point.
|
| A lot of the comments here read like a hobbyist programmer
| saying "C++ is dead, I haven't written any C++ in my projects
| for years and since I've switched to Rust, I've never looked
| back".
|
| Yes, I stand by this analogy because inkjet is _that_
| important. The market is doing great and technology is
| improving at an impressive rate.
|
| To build on your example of continuous IJ presses: more and
| more applications have lately been switching to drop-on-
| demand, as those printheads continue to get better
| (especially piezo IJ) and cheaper (especially thermal IJ).
| isametry wrote:
| Since there's no "jet" in your 3D printer from an engineering
| perspective, arguably you shouldn't. That would be extrusion
| (and Prusa correctly refers to it as such).
|
| "Inkjet 3D printing" exists, but it's something quite
| different:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_bed_and_inkjet_head_3D_...
| Liftyee wrote:
| Home inkjet printers are only ideal for a niche usecase where you
| print lots of photos regularly (to the point where you need your
| own printer over a photo printing service). Their only advantage
| over laser printers is higher image quality.
|
| If you don't print frequently, the ink nozzles clog up (and you
| inevitably use a bunch of ink trying to fix them). For infrequent
| document printing, a laser printer will Just Print whether it's
| been sitting unused for an hour or a month. If you occasionally
| need some photos printed, using one of the myriad services will
| be better than replacing the inevitably gunked up ink cartridges.
|
| If you print a lot of documents, the laser printer easily
| outstrips the speed of an inkjet. You'll also run up huge ink
| fees since the cost per page of ink tends to be higher than
| toner.
|
| Therefore, the only reason you should get an inkjet printer is if
| you often need high quality colour prints (photos).
| ptero wrote:
| I think the "occasional printing will clog up nozzles" affects
| some printer models more than the others.
|
| As a single data point, I used a Canon i9990 for many years. It
| had a very irregular use -- I would print a few 13x19 photos or
| a tiled panorama, or an occasional school picture of kids for
| the relatives. Then it would sit unused for days to months
| until the next job. And even with this supposedly abusive cycle
| it ran like new until it completely died one day.
|
| I personally had worse luck with image printing services. Maybe
| the machines are off, maybe the fellow who runs it does not
| care, but more often than not there is something subtly wrong:
| either the color is off, or there is a smudge at the edge or
| some minor artifact. My 2c.
| treflop wrote:
| You're posting on an article about other things inkjet is used
| for and then you say the only thing you need a home inkjet
| printer for is for photos?
|
| ????
|
| Photos is the last thing I'd buy an inkjet printer for. I'd be
| using a home inkjet to make circuit boards, temporary shirts,
| screen printing masks, transparencies, stickers, etc.
| bogantech wrote:
| > I'd be using a home inkjet to make circuit boards
|
| I've heard of using Laser printers for this but not InkJet
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Laser printers are used for the toner transfer method,
| where you print your etching mask on a glossy paper and
| then transfer it to a PCB with heat (laminator, or clothes
| iron)
|
| Inkjet printers are used in a direct print to PCB (remember
| those inkjet printers that could print on CDs back in the
| day?)
| getwiththeprog wrote:
| Oh, did you read the article :)
|
| "Agilent developed a way to print strands of DNA from the
| four nucleic acid bases--cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine
| (A), and thymine (T)."
|
| "Inkjet systems are particularly suited for printing drugs in
| the form of thin films, such as transdermal patches to be
| applied to the skin and buccal films to be held in the cheek,
| where drugs can pass directly to the bloodstream without
| first going through the digestive system."
|
| These applications are from dedicated machines, not available
| at BestBuy. Though I would like to see a supplier selling
| conductive inks for circuit board prototyping, and just maybe
| a home system could be filled with DNA or medicines??
|
| The article also gave an interesting overview of the micro-
| dosing technology using for example piezo-electrics.
| frognumber wrote:
| I have an Epson inkjet, similar to this model:
|
| https://www.bestbuy.com/site/epson-workforce-pro-wf-7840-wir...
|
| 1) Surprisingly, the running costs, with generic ink, are the
| same as a laser.
|
| 2) The text quality is fine. The image quality is better than a
| laser. Photos are great.
|
| 3) It can do larger formats (up to 13x19), copies, duplex, etc.
| The cost is literally a fraction of a similar laser. A large
| format laser is $$$. This one is $250 right now.
|
| 4) The speed is similar to a basic laser, but slower than a
| nice laser. It's rated at 12PPM color and 25PPM mono. It's
| slower, but it's fast enough.
|
| I used to share your opinion, but ink has come a long ways.
| Something like this is super-versatile, since it does literally
| everything for $250.
|
| Just don't get HP.
| syncbehind wrote:
| > Just don't get HP.
|
| The real pro-tips are always in the comments.
| harshaxnim wrote:
| Actually not a pro tip anymore.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > Just don't get HP.
|
| I've had a cheapish HP Smart Tank for several years, filled
| it with 3rd party ink, it goes weeks without use and had no
| problems.
| prox wrote:
| Just as an overview I recently researched for a new
| printer but of all the reviews, HP comes out last by a
| mile. I think the smartprint was mentioned a lot, then
| Canon (especially the low budget ones) , Epson/Brother
| are kind of tiered.
| Errsher wrote:
| I had an Epson inkjet and I only used it maybe once a month,
| and I had to change the ink cartridges every other time I
| used it, despite attempts at maintenance. I've now a laser
| printer for a couple years and am now only just running low
| on toner. Don't buy inkjet.
| frognumber wrote:
| It depends on the model.
|
| At the time I was buying mine, Epson marketed the WorkForce
| Series as the ones which didn't rip you off on ink, and
| WorkForce Pro, I believe, was even better.
|
| Read reviews for printing costs, and adjust for the cost of
| generic ink. That's even true for lasers now; it's rare,
| but I've seen models designed to rip you off on toner too.
| prox wrote:
| I just got the EcoTank one and it doesn't use cartridges
| AND I can see the ink level. For my use cases it ticks all
| the boxes.
| numpad0 wrote:
| The problem for GP and for me too is inkjets needs a
| couples of cleaning and test prints after a drop of IPA
| on K, C, LC, LM and M ink drawing port each time I'd use
| it. That won't happen with lasers at all.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The EcoTank draws a lot of power constantly, and can not
| be left off for long times or that ink will ruin
| everything.
|
| It has the problem the GP was talking about, increased to
| complete new levels.
| ekianjo wrote:
| how is Cups support?
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| Fine. I use a
| https://www.epson.com.au/products/ecotank/ET-4750.asp with
| Cups. It just works. Surprising the Linux scanner software
| they provide also works, if a little clunky.
|
| The heads don't clog on these printers, although perhaps
| they do need to be continuously powered to pull that trick
| off. As the sibling comment said, they are cheap to run,
| and as reliable as a laser. I gather all manufacturers have
| similar models that work just as well, including HP.
|
| Be warned that since you aren't being ripped off for the
| ink you will be asked to pay the real cost of the printer.
| The cost is comparable to a laser, but much higher then
| their "we are going to gouge you on ink" cousins they will
| be sitting beside on the store shelf.
| treyd wrote:
| The standard Ubuntu document scanner app also justwerks
| with the Epson printer/scanner my dad has, surprisingly.
| I'm not even sure how.
| oynqr wrote:
| For printing, pretty much everything now works with IPP
| Everywhere, even if not certified. For scanning, SANE has
| built-in backends for most devices, and even a built-in
| as well as a third-party AirScan backend, which will
| again work with most newer devices.
| frognumber wrote:
| On mine, plug-and-play.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I have a WF-4833 and CUPS/SANE support is really great. The
| only problem I've noticed is if you use two-sided scanning
| with the ADF, the odd pages will be upside down. You could
| probably fix it if you use SANE at the command line, but
| I've only ever used XSane, and had to manually flip the
| pages after scanning.
| Natsu wrote:
| I print no more than a few times per year, but those times I
| do print it'd be really annoying not to be able to print.
| Inkjet simply doesn't work for that kind of use case, you
| have to be printing somewhat regularly for it to make any
| sense. Highly irregular printing patterns like this are
| better served by laser, because the toner doesn't go bad just
| because you haven't printed this month.
| lelanthran wrote:
| None of those 4 points are dealbreakers. The deal-breaker is
| "do the nozzles fail to perform if not used regularly?"
| userbinator wrote:
| This is true if you're in a dry/mostly-dry climate. In
| Southeast Asia, a humid tropical climate, they have problems
| with toner clumping instead of ink drying, and I've noticed
| that inkjets (invariably with CIS/bulk ink systems installed)
| are far more popular than lasers.
| stephenr wrote:
| I can confirm; in 11 years I haven't had a single issue with
| ink drying out, with very sporadic use of our printer.
|
| I have also noticed lots of government offices that print a
| bunch of stuff all put an inkjet on almost every (rather than
| shared laser printers I'd been expecting to see), and I
| wondered why. Your explanation may be the key to that too.
| thayne wrote:
| > Their only advantage over laser printers is higher image
| quality.
|
| There is also the significantly lower price. Although,if you
| print a lot, you'll eventually make up the price difference in
| toner. If, like me, you only need to print rarely, it's
| probably better just to print at a library or FedEx or UPS
| store when needed. But there is probably somewhere in the
| middle where a decent inkjet is more economical, especially if
| you can get one that works with third party ink cartridges.
| kmarc wrote:
| > If you don't print frequently, the ink nozzles clog up
|
| Not sure about other printers, but I use HP InkJet for a
| decade, never clogged up, sometimes sits unused for a month or
| more.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > If you don't print frequently, the ink nozzles clog up...
|
| This was true before, but my 10 year old Deskjet 4515 doesn't
| do that, even if you don't print for a couple of months.
|
| Being an InkAdvantage(TM) printer, cartridges are not expensive
| either, and while its color inks are dye based (not pigmented),
| the colors hold up very well even when they are not stored
| properly (frame the photo up and leave it there).
|
| B&W laser printers are nice, and they're cheap on the long run,
| but color laser printers polish the paper a lot (4 drums +
| baking), and reading long papers on that shiny copy is not very
| comfortable. Pens' handling on that paper also changes after
| that much heat and processing. Inkjets and B&W lasers doesn't
| have that problem.
|
| I use my B&W laser for more disposable documents, but for code
| and papers which contains graphics, I prefer my Inkjet very
| much.
|
| Lastly, people think that ink is just colored water. It's not.
| Same is true for toner. They're complex technologies. Yes,
| cartridges sent for some markup, but ink and toner quality
| varies. Esp. if you want archival prints.
| petee wrote:
| Unless you print a ton, cost is definitely an issue. I was
| excited when I got a _free_ color laser that was fairly new,
| but it was over $200 just to replace the black; my inkjet and a
| dozen replacements is still cheaper than refilling the all the
| laser cartridges
| russelg wrote:
| That full-colour 3D printer from Mikami they mention is quite
| awesome, with an eye-watering price!
|
| https://www.mimakiusa.com/products/3d/3duj-553/
| ninju wrote:
| Here's a video of a Mimaki printer at the Formnext conference
|
| 3D Printing with 10,000,000 colors
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IkvzMJihuY
| tdudhhu wrote:
| I expected a much higher price. While $190000 is steep it
| doesn't seem that much for such printer. For example: Nexa3D
| ships SLS printers for over $500000
| devsda wrote:
| Before someone thinks it costs just $190 for a color 3d
| printer, its ~ $190K.
|
| TIL that some countries use comma and a period for separating
| numbers and decimals respectively and some other countries
| use them the other way around.
| chgs wrote:
| And some counties group numbers in twos rather than threes
| - 1,23,45,678.90
|
| International standard is space for separators - 1 000 000.
| That's a pain on a phone.
| isametry wrote:
| Figure space to be specific (U+2007 or &numsp). A plain
| space like in your million will break across lines.
|
| (And yes, that's even more of a pain on a phone.)
| anymouse123456 wrote:
| I bought my Brother color laser printer 12 years ago in a fit of
| HP inkjet induced rage.
|
| It just runs and runs and runs.
|
| I've bought a couple more for around the office and recommend
| them every time the subject of printers comes up.
|
| If you don't want GBs of bullshit malware pretending at being
| drivers, you're sick of the color ink shenanigans, and you want a
| printer that wakes up and prints every single time, get a Brother
| Laser printer. They're amazing.
|
| No affiliation, just a super grateful customer.
| cbozeman wrote:
| And the sad part now is that HP Color LaserJets are hampered by
| such godawful software and design that I wish I had bought a
| Brother color laser printer. I will never make that mistake
| again.
|
| I have a beautiful HP Color LaserJet MFP 4301dfw that
| constantly loses connection to the WiFi access point and
| requires a reboot and/or logging into the incredibly shitty HP
| Smart software. I really wish HP had enterprise-grade or at
| least prosumer software instead of this fucking awful consumer
| shit. A $599 printer should have a solid software stack, and HP
| even markets it to small office consumers.
|
| The machine has a beautifully designed exterior and solid
| internals that are plagued with an absolute shit software
| stack. Bill Hewlett and David Packard are probably rolling over
| in their grave at how fucking far their laser printer division
| has fallen.
| anymouse123456 wrote:
| Indeed about the founders. I'm sorry to hear you were
| fleeced. I highly recommend taking that monster out back and
| recreating our favorite scene from Office Space.
|
| HP was once a great company that innovated and made
| incredible technology.
|
| It was taken over by financial types in the late nineties.
| They sold off the test equipment core business and leaned
| into cost cutting. They excised any vestiges of integrity or
| quality wherever it could be found.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| Ethernet. Do that thing.
|
| With regard to software, I've long since accepted that HP,
| Brother, Canon et al can't write drivers to save their lives
| - and shouldn't have to - in a world where AirPrint, Chrome
| OS Printing, Windows IPP, or Direct IP printing exist.
|
| It's long past time for printing to be treated as an OS
| service, where 3rd parties write the smallest possible shim
| to plug into available devices.
| xarope wrote:
| I used to think I needed an inkjet, but I switched to a brother
| laser B/W printer years ago (mainly because of the linux
| compatibility), and in that time, I've only wished to print a
| color photo ... oh wait, never!
| pbj1968 wrote:
| I bought some HP printer last year for $75. A couple bucks on
| popular auction site got me a coupon code that gave me like 16
| months of free ink. Several reams of free paper.
|
| The printer experience itself is horrible. I'm constantly having
| to reboot it, it cannot maintain a WiFi connection, they have
| crippled usb on it, etc. Reviews back me up, it's a common
| experience.
|
| However, it makes beautiful prints. I have printed literally
| hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages of full color. And HP
| dutifully sends me another cartridge without prompting.
|
| Just a couple weeks left on that trial. And the plan? Chunk it in
| the trash and start over again.
|
| Weird times, friends. :)
| latchkey wrote:
| If only a million people did that and then someone collected
| all the trashed printers into a pile. It would make a really
| interesting art project.
| lupire wrote:
| That's what e-cycling is.
| latchkey wrote:
| Have you ever tried to e-cycle 1 million printers?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The best ink jets are the kind that take solid ink. Solid ink
| doesn't go bad in 2 months, and isn't going to leak all over your
| floor. More info:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_ink#Advantages
| masteruvpuppetz wrote:
| Has anyone modded the inkjet into a cutter (like cricut)?
|
| I'd like to know about any projects because a cutter is quite a
| lot expensive although it seems like the same tech as an inkjet
| printer.
| lupire wrote:
| Printers have extremely tiny tolerances. A cutter wants a bit
| more distance to fit the blade. Probably not worth the effort
| vs just buying a cutter.
| gattr wrote:
| In Greg Bear's novel "Quantico" terrorists use inkjets to produce
| their biological weapon's deliverable particles.
| ijijijjij wrote:
| You could play music with them too...
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Not inkjet music but dot-matrix, and quite beautiful: _Man or
| Astro-Man?_ - _A Simple Text File_ :
| https://youtu.be/o0QHY7S-OtU
| scovetta wrote:
| Obligatory "just get a Brother printer" comment. They are the
| cast iron pans of printing technology, the kind that your kids
| and grandkids will inherit some day.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Sadly they do drop support for old models in drivers for new OS
| versions, so I can only print from my aging gaming PC. Maybe
| network printing solves this but mine is USB-only.
| mdaniel wrote:
| by sheer coincidence last night I learned of a thriving community
| around modding Epson inkjet printers with "continuous ink supply
| system (CISS)" and (highly sus') firmware patches to turn them
| into dye sublimation and direct to film transfer prints. The
| videos said they use Epson because unlike other vendors they
| don't use _heat_ in their printheads making it safe(?) to run dye
| sub ink through them (e.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHWTko3lk5Y )
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