Tired of paying the equivalent of $10,000 per gallon for inkjet cartridges, and throwing away printers that aren’t fixable? According to the Open Printer project, a solution is on the way.
Usually, I don’t report on projects that are on their way to being crowdfunded but I’m breaking my rule on this one. The other day I saw an advance post from a group called Open Tools about Open Printer, an upcoming inkjet printer that will be fully user repairable and upgradable. Not only that, its inkjet cartridges are fully refillable, it’s completely open source, and with a design that anyone can understand well enough to make the word “repairable” meaningful.
“Built with standard mechanical components and modular parts, it’s easy to assemble, modify, and repair,” the Open Printer folks said in a post on Crowd Supply. “You can print on standard sheets or paper rolls and choose between black or color cartridges, refillable at your convenience.”
It’s probably a good thing that they mentioned the paper choices in the post, because all of the accompanying photos show the device loaded with rolled paper, meaning it wasn’t obvious that you could feed it paper sheets, which could be a deal breaker for some people. That being said, if you want to save a bit on paper costs by using the paper option, it comes with a built-in paper slicer, which should make it impossible to tell that the finished product came off a roll.
What isn’t mentioned, however, is the ability of the machine to handle envelopes.
Built on a Totally Open Framework
According to the folks at Open Tools, this printer built on open principles from the top to the bottom. Even its electronics and mechanical design files, firmware code, and the bill of materials are covered under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
