I would love an affordable 3D printer. But I don't really trust HP to do that. I already got rid of my 2D HP printer because I was sick of paying insane prices for ink cartridges. And I swear every time I printed something on that thing it would complain that another cartridge was low.
Affordable is the problem I have with the current 3D printing culture. It seems kind of senseless for everyone to have a prototyping machine at your home (although a fun hobby).
I would much rather have the most accurate reproduction of material qualities and form. I can now produce industry level magazines and milled metal parts by having them produced on a high end machine somewhere, it does not need to be in my basement.
That's the real empowering point for me. Industrial level quality obtainable by a single user from home.
find older business full color laser printer instead. I got oldish HP LaserJet 3600n which have both cheap cartridges and a way to override low toner lever warning.
For a home printer I love my Konica Minolta MC1600W. Cost <$150 on Amazon, "ink" lasts forever, and replacement toner kit is cheaper than many Inkjet replacements.
Plus it's quick, and produces great everything. Probably wouldn't satisfy a professional photographer, but for me it's a lot better than any Inkjet I've ever owned. Especially since it's used so infrequently. With Inkjets the print-heads would frequently go bad between usages. That could easily push my "few pages to print every few months" use-case into dollar-per-page territory.
The only downside is it doesn't have air-print, never will, KM has discontinued it, and at some point in the future I won't be able to buy replacement toner cartridges.
But I'm OK with that since it's already lasted longer and saved me more money than any previous printer I've owned.
If I did have to replace it, I'd definitely get another Color Laser. The Brother HL3170CDW comes in at $100 more, you can get all four colors in high-yield replacement cartridges for about $100, and it includes AirPrint.
My understanding is that AirPrint is basically a linux CUPS server. A quick Google search turned up several write-ups on using a Raspberry Pi to add wireless & AirPrint capabilities to older printers. I know there are also some retail routers & print servers that do the same since I was researching this for my parents about a year ago, but they were on the expensive side.
Yep, I've got a cups server on my linux box to support the laptops in the house, and the ipad recognized it just fine. Nice bit of accidental compatibility there.
I assume you're implying that their 2D printers suck. Even so, a 3D printer that was as reliable as a terrible 2D printer would be ridiculously awesome right now.
Yes, not only is the ink overpriced as hell, they can't even manage to make their office inkjets work without completely dying after a few thousand pages.
Human blood is far more mass produced than printer ink. There are currently about 7 billion mostly independently owned and operated production facilities. The problem is the supply lines and market prices. Distribution of the surplus also tends to be fairly shitty.
(that last bit was a poop joke, not a statement about my opinions on the subject of donated blood distribution)
