OpenPrinter: an open-source, DRM-free inkjet you can refill and repair

Open Tools is crowdfunding OpenPrinter, an inkjet printer/plotter built as a deliberate rejection of the locked-down consumer printer market. The hardware runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero W with an STM32 microcontroller managing the cartridges, and ships as either a self-assembly kit or a ready-to-use unit. Its plastic parts are 3D-printable and its mechanical components are off-the-shelf, so the whole machine is meant to be maintained and repaired indefinitely to cut down on electronic waste. It prints on standard A4/A3 (or Letter/Tabloid) sheets as well as paper rolls up to 37.5 m long, with an integrated cutter for banners and custom formats.

The core pitch is control over consumables. It uses common HP cartridges (302, 63, or 803 depending on region) that can be refilled with bulk ink and carry no DRM or firmware blocks, and it lets users print with the black and color cartridges independently — sidestepping the familiar refusal to print black when an unrelated color runs dry. Printing is handled by the open-source CUPS server, giving driver-free operation across Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android over USB-C, Wi-Fi (AirPrint), or Bluetooth.

The openness comes with caveats worth noting. The project is released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 (non-commercial, share-alike), yet the team has also filed a patent plus design and model registrations covering the architecture, and says it will only publish the design files once the product is finalized to avoid inconsistent forks. That mix of open licensing, restrictive clauses, and IP protection is the kind of tension likely to draw scrutiny from the community it’s courting. Pre-orders run through a Crowd Supply campaign.