A Printer Printing onto Paper

(twitter.com)

72 points | by MrBuddyCasino 3 days ago

8 comments

  • gnabgib 4 hours ago
    No discussion, but this is from the Nikon Small World competition (4 points, yesterday) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50234796

    The Nikon Small World in Motion competition, which only recently ended, was troubled by the prize winner being AI generated (3 points, 24 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49934521

    • Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 24 minutes ago
      > Dr Xu, an optical engineering researcher at the National University of Singapore, reportedly responded to the LinkedIn post. According to Nature, Dr Xu accepted that he had used an AI model to assist with post-processing but denied breaking the rules of the competition, which clearly state that “AI-generated videos are not permitted.”

      > “It was applied afterwards to the reconstructed grayscale data to distinguish and color structures with similar morphology,” he wrote.

      > However, Dr Xu’s messages on the LinkedIn post can’t be found as of today (October 1), and his LinkedIn profile now appears to have been deleted entirely.

      > Scientists have repeatedly said that the issue could be resolved if Dr Xu shares his RAW grayscale video.

    • kristianp 3 hours ago
      Fascinating images. The article linked by the parent has some info https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/10/meet-the-2026-winner...

      His website is https://www.macrofying.com/ which is mostly links to the usual image/video sharing sites.

  • Barbing 36 minutes ago
  • jongjong 4 minutes ago
    It's quite amazing technology. I wonder how they managed to make ink which dries fast on paper but doesn't dry and clog up the print head.
  • ksec 2 hours ago
    While this is fascinating, I am sitting here wondering if anything has improved in the Inkjet printer world.

    Does it still clog up? There are many be one or two more refillable ink printers but are they good? Has printing quality improved?

    Or are they still a bag of hurt we should all just hope for better and cheaper colour laser / LED printer.

    • buildbot 43 minutes ago
      > Does it still clog up?

      Yes, even very high end printers like an Epson p5370 - https://luminous-landscape.com/the-epson-sc-p5370-printer/ "The printhead is the same relatively maintenance-light device that P900 owners (and predecessor P3880/3800 owners) really appreciate. These heads don’t clog much unless you leave the printer idle over long intervals and/or sit the printer in a very dry environment."

      > Has printing quality improved?

      Depends on the printer? A professional inkjet is extremely high quality these days.

      >Or are they still a bag of hurt we should all just hope for better and cheaper colour laser / LED printer.

      In a distant past I was tech support help desk person, which included poking the many color laser printers we had. They also actually broke all the time :(

    • jbarham 1 hour ago
      I have the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550 printer and have found it to be excellent for printing photos. It prints up to A3+ size (13" x 19") and ink costs are low since it uses tanks, which can be refilled using ink bottles, vs cartridges. The main caveat is that it uses dye inks which theoretically don't have the longevity of pigment inks, but for my purposes (family photos and photo club competitions) it doesn't matter.

      Keith Cooper on YouTube has lots of informative videos about the ET-8550: https://www.youtube.com/@KeithCooper/search?query=8550

    • thenthenthen 1 hour ago
      The key is using it, but…not too much…. I bought a inkjet printer and run maybe 10k pages through it, after i let it sit for 3 weeks it was basically unusable: clogged nozzles, misalignment. After working with riso printers for 10 years, I didnt feel the urge to fix it or have it repaired.
      • addaon 35 minutes ago
        Sounds like someone needs to make an app that just prints out a calendar page or newspaper front page every morning to keep things flowing...
  • nomel 2 hours ago
    Not sure if that's bubble jet or inkjet, but I think inkjets are very very cool!

    For a deep dive of inkjets, there's a conference that posts talks: https://youtube.com/@theijc

    And, a shallower dive of the complexities of inks is the great "engineerguy": https://youtu.be/-DckWNwE7R4

  • dylan604 4 hours ago
    With all of the DRM nonsense around printers and authorized print cartridges, I'm kind of shocked the cartridge doesn't also have something that prevents printing if not in an authorized printer.

    Not being part of a printer have anything to do with why the print looks bad? Like the thing he created to get the print head to spray ink isn't the same drivers and that's just a PoC to make the project possible? If this is just an extension cable from an actual printer, the quality looks janky to what I'd expect from modern ink jets.

    • drum55 3 hours ago
      There's been controllers for all sorts of common cartridges for a long time, a lot of low end UV printers all use a specific Epson cartridge that they run their own plumbing and electronics for. The end result of the device looks almost hand made a lot of the time, it's an XY plotter with a gigantic expensive print head on the end. https://www.amazon.com/mew/dp/B0FF93HB2W https://www.ebay.com/itm/397039456738
    • sam1714 1 hour ago
      The printer is subsidized by the price of the cartridge. If you want to pay the hardware subsidy without getting any hardware, they're fine with that.
  • kensaito 3 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • eru 2 hours ago
      You can hear sight?
      • kensaito 2 hours ago
        Sorry, the AI translation didn’t quite capture what I meant. I meant that I’d love to hear your thoughts based on your sense of touch, rather than just your visual observations.
        • eru 1 hour ago
          Sorry for being a bit snarky. Your original comment came across as rather passive aggressive to me.

          English ain't my first language either, but I speak it well enough without AI translation.

          If you are using these systems, I would suggest deliberately being a bit more verbose so that they have more context to work with when translating. (Not sure if it would work, I'm just speculating.)

  • gaudat 4 hours ago
    AI slop picture i swear. Inkjet heads essentially boils ink to jet (see?) it out of tiny nozzels. Never drips like that.

    Yes i didn't bother reading the caption.

    • nomel 2 hours ago
      No, that is "bubble jet". Inkjets are proper resonant squirts, usually piezo driven.

      And, for that reason, inkjets work with a much wider variety of liquids. Taken to the extreme, you have full color 3d prints with incredible precision: https://youtu.be/4IkvzMJihuY

    • eru 2 hours ago
      If you scroll down a bit, you can see more realistic looking videos.