Open Printer

Description

How can printing be fun again?

By breaking free from boring, closed, disposable printers.
Imagine building your own printer, printing on any paper size you want, and refilling your cartridges by hand.

That’s what this project is about: making a printer that’s affordable, repairable, durable, and open to creative ideas.

Inspired by the awesome work of YTEC and SpriteMods a few years ago, I set out to push the concept further and turn it into a fully functional product — one that makers, artists, hackers, and curious people can actually use.

Specs?
Still evolving — more information to come!

Right now, the final prototyping phase is underway. In the meantime, I’ll be sharing:

Retrospectives on the challenges we’ve faced and the decisions we’ve made,

And updates as we gear up for the adventure of small-scale manufacturing.

Jump in and join us on this adventure!

Project Logs

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Colors !
Leonard • 05/22/2025 at 15:02 • 0 comments

Black ink is great, but offering a printer with color options is even better!

Having the flexibility to use either one cartridge or both is a real advantage too.

The cartridge we used in the first proof of concept worked well for monochrome ink, but the three-color version (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) proved difficult to reverse-engineer. On top of that, this cartridge model is fairly expensive and hard to find.

After seeing the incredible Magic Printer Cartridge Paintbrush project from SpritesMods (check it out here: https://spritesmods.com/?art=magicbrush), we decided to switch to a different cartridge reference.

This cartridge brings a lot of benefits: higher print resolution, a more compact design, fewer signal contacts, easier sourcing (a lot in garbage bin) and it’s cheaper. What more could you ask for?

Here’s how we worked through this transition step by step.
Next log, next step !
A logo for Open printer
Leonard • 05/07/2025 at 12:58 • 1 comment
Open Printer is alive !
Leonard • 04/30/2025 at 15:27 • 0 comments