It's been many years since printing from a PC involved little more than buying a printer and some ink, then purchasing extra cartridges when needed. Today, the...
Well, your Canon Pixma is real 1200 dpi, this one on the other hand is 600 in bw and 1200 in color. Generally speaking, this is a marketing trick used by printer manufacturers to make a printer sound better and what they do is they sum the dots of each color, advertising resolutions like 4800 x 1200 dpi. This means the actual resolution is 1200 dpi but horizontally they count the dots of each CMYK channel.
My guess is they can print a stable image in bw at 600 dpi, but in color they are limited to 300 (multiplied by the 4 channels). Also my guess is that this is because they seem to be struggling with halftoning, as written in the article:
On the software side, work continues on Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, as well as dithering algorithms designed to improve image quality.
Also, keep in mind dpi is not linear. Images are 2d, so a 1200 dpi print contains 4X the dots of a 600 dpi print.
I’m sorry, English is not my first language, and I may not have explained clearly.
The open printer likely prints at 1200 x 300 dpi (explained in my other comment) in color and the author of the article just reported it as 1200.
There is no was they can achieve stable cmyK prints at 1200 dpi, but only 600 dpi with just the K.
Therefore your printer is likely 16X more precise than the open one. This is quite important as inkjet printing is meant for high quality prints as it’s both slow and expensive.
I went immediately “they started making opensource print heads… since that is huge effort”… Oh it is just a carrier assembly for HP inkcartridges. Sure hack refillable ones, but still the main printing part is from big corporate. Waiting for the moment of “HP implemented backward DRM on their cartridge. HP cartridge only works, if it hears correct attestation from the printer.”
This all is based on them hacking a corporate part and that is newer sustainable open hardware route.
Using a print head a maker sells as just “We make printheads, what you do with it after is your business. We exactly sell these as industrial parts from people to build printer around (or whatever other device you have use for ink depositing thingie in)” fine. That is normal.
But “hey we made open inkjet printer”. “So you figured the vast tasks of designing and manufacturing inkjet print heads?” “No” “You found a suitable standard industrial part to build around, less amazing, but still okay?” “No” “So what did you figure out or provide to table?” “We hacked HPs part”. Soooo everyone using this is still paying HP tax and who knows HP might shut this whole thing down one way or another.
edit: Not to mention it is not like it is some impossible task to get inkjet printheads, like all legit and so on. One web search later leads for example to KonicaMinolta industrials website for their catalog of “Here we sell just the Inkjet heads, incase you want to make a printer. Here is the spec sheet how to run it.”
Fair, and I admire them for trying. I was just pointing out that these specs are closer to a 10-15 yo laser printer, which is likely cheaper to buy and print with.
If they were producing q laser printer of similar specs with open firmware I’d be first in line to get one.
Ouch. 600 DPI black and white and “1200 DPI” color resolution is very low for an inkjet.
At these resolutions I’d rather get a laser printer that’s well supported in Linux no matter what the price is.
I mean, commercial printing is typically 300-600 DPI…
That doesn’t sound right, so I pulled up the specs of my Canon Pixma. It’s also 1200dpi, so this matches up with my regular consumer printer.
What printers are you using where 1200dpi is low?
Edit: Pulled up an Epson EcoTank and even that’s at 1440dpi
I remember owning 300dpi printers.
And dot matrix printers!
Well, your Canon Pixma is real 1200 dpi, this one on the other hand is 600 in bw and 1200 in color. Generally speaking, this is a marketing trick used by printer manufacturers to make a printer sound better and what they do is they sum the dots of each color, advertising resolutions like 4800 x 1200 dpi. This means the actual resolution is 1200 dpi but horizontally they count the dots of each CMYK channel.
My guess is they can print a stable image in bw at 600 dpi, but in color they are limited to 300 (multiplied by the 4 channels). Also my guess is that this is because they seem to be struggling with halftoning, as written in the article:
Also, keep in mind dpi is not linear. Images are 2d, so a 1200 dpi print contains 4X the dots of a 600 dpi print.
Okay, but that doesn’t answer the question. You’re claiming 1200dpi is very low, but aren’t backing that up.
I’m sorry, English is not my first language, and I may not have explained clearly.
The open printer likely prints at 1200 x 300 dpi (explained in my other comment) in color and the author of the article just reported it as 1200.
There is no was they can achieve stable cmyK prints at 1200 dpi, but only 600 dpi with just the K.
Therefore your printer is likely 16X more precise than the open one. This is quite important as inkjet printing is meant for high quality prints as it’s both slow and expensive.
The big thing here is this printer is repairable, there no spyware or vendor lock in for specific ink cartridges.
This is hardware that if you buy you truly own.
Honestly for these reasons alone I am going to buy this.
I went immediately “they started making opensource print heads… since that is huge effort”… Oh it is just a carrier assembly for HP inkcartridges. Sure hack refillable ones, but still the main printing part is from big corporate. Waiting for the moment of “HP implemented backward DRM on their cartridge. HP cartridge only works, if it hears correct attestation from the printer.”
This all is based on them hacking a corporate part and that is newer sustainable open hardware route.
Using a print head a maker sells as just “We make printheads, what you do with it after is your business. We exactly sell these as industrial parts from people to build printer around (or whatever other device you have use for ink depositing thingie in)” fine. That is normal.
But “hey we made open inkjet printer”. “So you figured the vast tasks of designing and manufacturing inkjet print heads?” “No” “You found a suitable standard industrial part to build around, less amazing, but still okay?” “No” “So what did you figure out or provide to table?” “We hacked HPs part”. Soooo everyone using this is still paying HP tax and who knows HP might shut this whole thing down one way or another.
edit: Not to mention it is not like it is some impossible task to get inkjet printheads, like all legit and so on. One web search later leads for example to KonicaMinolta industrials website for their catalog of “Here we sell just the Inkjet heads, incase you want to make a printer. Here is the spec sheet how to run it.”
So in the end is just another open project goin to fail :(
Fair, and I admire them for trying. I was just pointing out that these specs are closer to a 10-15 yo laser printer, which is likely cheaper to buy and print with.
If they were producing q laser printer of similar specs with open firmware I’d be first in line to get one.
A 10 to 15 year old laser printer is going to have its fuser fail in a year and that replacement part costs as much as a new printer.