Unfortunately there is close to zero trustworthy hardware manufacturer these days. In the DIY world there’s still Virax or Festool who have a well-deserved good reputation. In the laptop/phone space there’s some manufacturers making efforts like System76/Librem and a few others, but they still have no power over all the components so obsolescence (planed or not) still applies.
But in the 2D printer world it’s just… mafia everywhere. Apparently print heads are remarkable high-tech that are designed around specific ink mechanical properties to handle, and there’s very few people/corporations with the know-how and the budget to produce these. That’s why you find an abundance of free-hardware 3D printers (a heating head is easy to manufacture) but exactly zero free-hardware 2D printer.
I personally would spend more money than i should on a free-hardware 2D printer. Printers are usually the worst pieces of hardware i have to interact with.
Unfortunately there is close to zero trustworthy hardware manufacturer these days. In the DIY world there’s still Virax or Festool who have a well-deserved good reputation. In the laptop/phone space there’s some manufacturers making efforts like System76/Librem and a few others, but they still have no power over all the components so obsolescence (planed or not) still applies.
But in the 2D printer world it’s just… mafia everywhere. Apparently print heads are remarkable high-tech that are designed around specific ink mechanical properties to handle, and there’s very few people/corporations with the know-how and the budget to produce these. That’s why you find an abundance of free-hardware 3D printers (a heating head is easy to manufacture) but exactly zero free-hardware 2D printer.
I personally would spend more money than i should on a free-hardware 2D printer. Printers are usually the worst pieces of hardware i have to interact with.