IDEA : Framework Printer

General Topics
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The Inkredible Mafia: How Printer Companies are the Real Gangsters

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https://x.com/baconwrangler/status/1750258513635311640?s=20

In the world of organized crime, there are the usual suspects: drug cartels, human traffickers, and of course, the Italian Mafia. But there’s a new gang on the block, one that operates not in the shadows, but in brightly lit office buildings: the printer ink mafia .

These corporate Goombas lure you in with cheap printers, whispering sweet nothings about affordability and convenience. But once you’re hooked, they hit you with the real racket: exorbitant ink prices . A single cartridge can cost more than the printer itself! It’s a cruel bait-and-switch, leaving you feeling like you’ve been taken for a ride on a toner roller coaster .

The Cartel’s Tactics:

  • Lock-in: Printer companies use proprietary cartridges and chips, making it nearly impossible to use cheaper alternatives. You’re trapped in their ink ecosystem, like a mouse in a toner trap .
  • Planned Obsolescence: Printers are designed to gobble up ink quickly, forcing you to repurchase cartridges more often. It’s like they have a built-in ink guzzler .
  • Psychological Warfare: Low-ink warnings and error messages are designed to instill fear and panic, driving you to buy more ink before your precious printer goes belly up. It’s pure inktimidation .

Breaking Free from the Ink-quisition:

Don’t be a victim of the ink mafia! we need to fight back:

#IDEA : FRAMEWORK PRINTER

yes framework open source printer which would accept any DIY ink in any bottle , no chips , no shady ink deals.

It will be excellent project for framework team , as after finishing FW16 there will not much to do , so here is good project for FW team

thanks

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I think they intend to continue iterating on the FW13 and FW16!

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Really like this idea. My current printer recently died with some weird error message I could not make sense of. Honestly I would love buying a Framework printer.

Edit: It also just came to my mind that manufacturing a printer is a LOT different than manufacturing a laptop. Additionally to all the electronic stuff you also need to take care of the actual printing and thus need to have some decent knowledge in this area. So although I like the idea this could be more work than it seems on the first glance and idk if Framework could handle this (yet),

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Make it a laser printer. Inkjet printers are just fundamentally unsuited to low-volume consumer use, as the ink dries up between prints, the nozzles have to be purged and cleaned etc. A cheap color laser with a standard toner cartridge is the way to go.

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To be honest printers have become very economical with the amount of Ink they use. They aren’t designed to use up ink quickly.
Its that the cartridge do in fact only contain a ridiculously small amount of ink and a huge amount of sponges and air.

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Three major inkjet printer manufacturers (Canon, Epson and HP) have now embraced the idea of ink refill. In those models it is almost impossible to block the use of foreign ink, all they can do would be to refuse the product guarantee.

Recently I bought a model of that kind for about 230 Euro (monochrome) and I got ink rated for 10,000+ pages. It looks fairly reasonable for me.