Reliance on the HP cartridges maybe a mistake as HP wants to cut 3rd parties out and sell direct to customers via subscription.
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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Third-party cartridges will continue to be available. HP printers they are compatible with are expected to last decades because that's how long most of them make HP money.
This is so awesome!
Now make that with a continuous ink system.
I once worked at a place with a fancy printer that didn't use cartridges and instead used blocks of wax that could be continually fed into it. It took 20 minutes to start up and warm the wax up to the point it could be used as ink, but I thought it was a nifty idea. They're called solid ink printers if you're interested in looking them up.
So... Basically the same principle as 3d printing (melt the printing medium, send it through an extruding head that directs it onto a surface in a desired pattern), but just in 2 dimensions, and with a different printing medium? Neat.
Yes, called sth like Tektronix Phaser, and I seem to remember some big company bought the patent...
Have the patents expired? I'd assume InkJet is older than 2005
I love this! If its reasonably priced I'd go for one.
I'm wondering about the price too. Feel like we see someone trying to do this every few years and most of them tend to fall apart when someone figures out how much it will cost to do it effectively.
This one seem to have kept it very simple though. Not exactly a new idea but simplifying paper feed with the continuous roll & cutter idea might be genius.
That rules. I wonder what the print speed it, and if they'll be a way to use toner carts
Not a super complicated device, but toner would be a very different tech stack, probably not.