This is the best I can find an open source printers, It uses an ancient HP black cartridge that’s still in production which provides you the heads. The cartridge is pretty cheap.
The problem is the ink they use brings more to the table than just being expensive. Unless you intend on using a ballpoint pen plotter or you’re going back to Dot matrix, you can’t just deliver regular ink to a page. The piezo-electric nozzles need a very specific density and viscosity, It needs to dry at just exactly the right time and be able to be cleaned off the nozzle with the lightest wipe. The ink and the nozzles have 50 years of experience behind them.
Making a head go across the page with precision and high resolution is a very well solved problem, couple of steppers some electronics Legos and a 5-minute Google search you could get that part going. But you’re going to have to use somebody’s printheads and ink because that’s well beyond DIY scope.
This is the best I can find an open source printers, It uses an ancient HP black cartridge that’s still in production which provides you the heads. The cartridge is pretty cheap.
https://www.instructables.com/Make-a-Handheld-InkJet-Printer-Print-on-ANY-Surfac/
The problem is the ink they use brings more to the table than just being expensive. Unless you intend on using a ballpoint pen plotter or you’re going back to Dot matrix, you can’t just deliver regular ink to a page. The piezo-electric nozzles need a very specific density and viscosity, It needs to dry at just exactly the right time and be able to be cleaned off the nozzle with the lightest wipe. The ink and the nozzles have 50 years of experience behind them.
Making a head go across the page with precision and high resolution is a very well solved problem, couple of steppers some electronics Legos and a 5-minute Google search you could get that part going. But you’re going to have to use somebody’s printheads and ink because that’s well beyond DIY scope.