My resin printer was powered off with resin in the vat for about 7 months. Last night I turned it on, gave it a job, and I woke up to a successful print.
My inkjet printer was powered off for 2 weeks. Last night I turned it on, gave it a job, and was instantly disappointed with a streaky, blotchy output. Running a clean cycle just made the output worse.
Why are 2D printers so terrible despite decades of development? What are some 2D printers this community has had good interactions with/would recommend?
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Brother laser printers are great.
I got mine almost a decade ago and I’ve replaced the toner once, never had issues with it.
It just works
Haven’t used mine for 2 years, but it worked with the first toner for over a decade now.
I’ve heard the lady who fucked up HP has been hired to the board of Brother, though. So who knows how long this sort of thing will last.
Another vote for the Brother monochrome laser printer. My LH-23200 has needed toner once since 2017, and a four pack of toner from Brother costs about $30.
Thank you, brother. Which brand do you recommend?
Second! I love my brother
Yup.
A few years ago I needed to print something for a job I was applying for and I had three inkjets, none of which worked. Replacement ink wasn’t even a guaranteed solution and was going to cost three figures anyway…so I started looking into whether there was a better option.
Ended up buying a Brother color laser printer. A bit spendy, but now when I need to print something after not printing for months, I just literally tell it to print and it gets it exactly right, first try, every time.
Zero regrets.
At this point it might just be more reliable to print a 1 layer thick text document on my 3D printer.
I suggested that to my kid the other day. Print a few layers of white, then swap to black filament. As it was an assignment for school my spouse vetoed it :(
First, avoid inkjets. They need to be used regularly to work reliably. If you don’t print, they will periodically blast ink through, till they run out. If you leave them turned off, the ink dries, and they clog up.
For day to day. A colour laser is the best bet. More expensive, and they struggle with photos, but they just keep on going. 1 refill costs 5x the cost of an inkjet, but will do 50x the prints.
If you need photos, a dye sublimation printer is the way forward. They are expensive to run, but create professional grade photos. The consumables also keep indefinitely.
As for brands. Brother is the best bet. They quietly produce the battle tanks of printers. They do 1 job very well, no faffing, no unnecessary bells and whistles.
In short, a brother colour laser printer is exactly what you are asking for.
Brother laser printer ftw. I think I spent $40 on it years ago, it’s never failed after hundreds of pages, and is still on the original toner. There’s a good chance it will be the last paper printer I ever buy.
Same, shit just works. I don’t even want anything I print to be color, by design, because it always is terrible anyway.
Brother laser printers are like the Soviet era Lada of printers. They are small, affordable, and you cannot kill them. No weird features that sounded great when buying, no stupid “pc load letter”, just pure core function. Keep it fed and it’ll print for 20 years.
We had an hl2030 for 15 years, and all it took to keep it running that time, was some fresh toner (which was surprisingly cheap) and a new fuser (once!). 15 years of 1500-2000 pages a year at its peak. I’ve been on dates that were more expensive than that printer’s TCO.
I have both a brother laser and a brother multifunction inkjet. Both have been solid for many years. However, with the inkjet, due to infrequent use, i found that the cartridges a/o print head would get clogged/dried after a while. I solved this by setting up a scheduled print job on one of my machines that fires off once a week. That document has 4 1” solid squares, their colors corresponding to the cartridge colors. Since starting this, i’ve had zero clogging issues, and i just recycle the weekly prints as scratch paper for notes, etc.
Shouldn’t the exposed ink be cleaned on a ‘sponge’, I thought that was common. It could run a cleaning before first print after long inactivity. I wonder if there’s a good reason not to.
I’ve had good experience with Brother laser printers. They don’t seem to mind being left unused for months at the time. I have a Brother color laser printer and a Brother B&W laser printer-scanner and I like them both a lot.
If you get a printer with a scanner, I recommend using the NAPS2 freeware for your scanning. It works great with a wide variety of scanners, is simple to use but highly configurable, and is a lot less of a nuisance than the proprietary scanning software that comes with most printers. Once your OS has the drivers it needs, you generally won’t need the proprietary bloatware that comes with the printer in my experience.
As for leaving resin sitting in a vat for extended periods, I don’t recommend it beyond a few days. Sure, you can get away with it like you did, but you can also develop various problems from it. The resin will separate (easily fixed by stirring) but it can also slowly leak out of the vat and make a mess (this happened to me).
I try to make a habit out of emptying my vat (through a filter back into the resin bottle) in order to inspect and/or clean the FEP semi-regularly. I also feel better about not having an open vat just sitting around to potentially get bumped and knocked around. If I am using the 3d printer heavily I don’t bother with this, but I know if it’s going to sit idle for a week or longer, I go ahead and empty & clean the vat.
I actually have a “resin mixing” gcode file that just raises and lowers the build plate a bunch while I’m warming up the shed my resin machine lives in. That mixes it up really nicely!
As for leaving resin in the vat, thank you for the advice, however I’ve been printing with this machine since 2020 and never empty the vat unless I’m changing resins or using a water washable (which I moved away from as the detail wasn’t as crisp, and it’s just as problematic as regular resin). I do run a clean cycle after a print, peel the sheet up, cure it and toss it. Never had to replace the FEP, never had any leakage issues
Get a Brother HL-L Series monochrome laser printer. You’ll have the same experience as with your 3D printer.
Inkjet printers are only an option if you need to print in (brilliant) color regularly, and then you’re probably running a photo print shop.
Cheap inkjet printers are literally useless trash.The brother line of laser jet printers has served me well. I almost never need to print in color, so I have the black and white variety. The toner lasts for a long time and it doesn’t dry out between uses. You can find relatively inexpensive toner cartridges for them as well.
My kids love to doodle on the computer and print the drawings out so color is a must. Thank you!
Laser does color these days
Not inkjet for sure.
I just strap a marker to the head of my 3D printer and then program it to write on some paper.
Truly the best solution!
Go buy a brother laser printer. I’ve personally never had any issues with them
I’ve had a Brother laser printer for years now. Zero regrets. I’m never going back to the ink jet mafia.
Yep, unless you need high quality color printing, laser is the way to go. Insanely cheaper to run and you can get super cheap 3rd party toner for brother printers last time I checked.
I’ve had two HP laserjets, and on each one I’ve printed thousands of pages sometimes years in between prints.
I had a Samsung SL-C430W (a laser color printer) and it still work really well after 7 years, but admitedly I don’t print that much and only a really few time a photos. On the other hand I printed on a variety of types of paper, from the standard one to the decals paper to paper to print shirts and lastly to paper to print on wood and it never disappointed.
Cheap toners (from Amazon) and really robust. But I think it is no sold.
Get a brother brand, it is the open source of printers, haven’t had a single problem with mine, ever
Brother inkjets never disappointed me. You should, however, not disconnect them from power as they self clean from time to time to prevent the mess you described.
Interesting. Does it have to be “on” or just plugged in? I don’t have a permanent space for a paper printer so it stays in the closet until we need it.
It’s only got to be plugged in. Wakes when the cleaning job is due, sleeps. Startles me with that sometimes in a quiet work moment.
