It's because it's not the printer. It's the print head. The printer is super simple. The printhead is a marvelous of modern engineering, MEMs and only able to be made in quantity by a handful of firms in the world. If you made your own printer, it would need to use one of their print heads, and they could lock you out. If you wanted to make your own print heads you would need to build a $100m mems semiconductor plant
This isn't really like that. Making state of the art printheads is more similar to things like camera sensor chips. Only a handful of companies have the tech to make them, its not a simple matter of buying some machines and putting them in a factory. It's a true marvel, not a middle of the road marvel.
And even the Chinese ripoff crap that uses a printhead (see also: those little handheld "pocket printer" things that let you "print on anything") just uses an HP 62 cartridge carrier and knockoff HP 62s.
(The HP 62 is the backbone of HP's TIJ 2.x platform, which is their OEM printing engine platform for specialty applications. They even sell blank tri-tank 62 carts for you to fill with your own specialty inks and materials to jet with the cartridge since it's got the onboard printhead.)
How is this different from, say, smartphone components? There are no-name phones. Are they all using Samsung or Apple screens that fell off a truck? I think not.
No-name phones end up using chipsets/radios from varios manufacturers: unisoc, broadcom, mediatek, rockchip, ...
They can just grab a reference schematic and pcb and tune it a bit and get it manufactured. They all use mostly the same interfaces and protocols, like mipi dsi for lcds, so they can have many almost drop-in alternatives to choose depending on availability.
For printheads, it's likely that there are no common standards, each manufacturer has it's own head-cartridge interface, so it's probably more expensive to remain open to changes, reducing the potential profits
Well, that's on me for saying "smartphone components" when I really wanted to emphasize the screens. Can smartphone screens be made in a significantly less expensive factory than print heads? Why or why not?
Because of scale factor. LG, Philips and Samsung because of large scale production, selling screens really very cheap, much cheaper than could small scale factory.
Equipment to produce screens is not something from other world, they are not cheap but achievable for business, but on small scale will not be cheaper than priced LG or Philips screen, even without considering taxes and fees of marketplaces (could add 2x-8x of cost).
If some small factory will try to enter market, it will immediately become bankrupt, because nobody will buy more expensive than from LG or Philips.
Exist possible exceptions - some Industrial or Space or Military applications (or for example, Medical), where customer have very specific needs and could pay additional money for them.
They cannot, just like the chips they are made in very large, expensive plants. There are only a handful of display manufacturers, especially as yoi get up to big panels.
Your foundational analogy is faulty, smartphones are not easy to make.
You can buy some chips for cents, that doesn't mean the factory that made them is any less amazing or difficult to build and operate. The cost of the individual product doesn't necessarily tie to the cost of the plant.
Yes, they usually are. They're usually from the same factory that supplies Samsung, apple, etc. Samsung gets the best screens, the ones with a few dead pixels go to the no-name manufacturers. There are YouTube videos about this. There is also a whole market of used "shucked" smartphone components.
There are ink cartridges which include the print head, like HP 54/78. I think they were designed before the DRM enshittification trend took hold, so I don't think there is any way to "lock out" independent uses.
Comments
It's because it's not the printer. It's the print head. The printer is super simple. The printhead is a marvelous of modern engineering, MEMs and only able to be made in quantity by a handful of firms in the world. If you made your own printer, it would need to use one of their print heads, and they could lock you out. If you wanted to make your own print heads you would need to build a $100m mems semiconductor plant
The way that could happen would be like for all other marvels of engineering.
Foreign company sets up shop to make the print heads. That factory becomes excellent at making them, and starts making extras for the black market.
This isn't really like that. Making state of the art printheads is more similar to things like camera sensor chips. Only a handful of companies have the tech to make them, its not a simple matter of buying some machines and putting them in a factory. It's a true marvel, not a middle of the road marvel.
And even the Chinese ripoff crap that uses a printhead (see also: those little handheld "pocket printer" things that let you "print on anything") just uses an HP 62 cartridge carrier and knockoff HP 62s.
(The HP 62 is the backbone of HP's TIJ 2.x platform, which is their OEM printing engine platform for specialty applications. They even sell blank tri-tank 62 carts for you to fill with your own specialty inks and materials to jet with the cartridge since it's got the onboard printhead.)
How is this different from, say, smartphone components? There are no-name phones. Are they all using Samsung or Apple screens that fell off a truck? I think not.
No-name phones end up using chipsets/radios from varios manufacturers: unisoc, broadcom, mediatek, rockchip, ...
They can just grab a reference schematic and pcb and tune it a bit and get it manufactured. They all use mostly the same interfaces and protocols, like mipi dsi for lcds, so they can have many almost drop-in alternatives to choose depending on availability.
For printheads, it's likely that there are no common standards, each manufacturer has it's own head-cartridge interface, so it's probably more expensive to remain open to changes, reducing the potential profits
Well, that's on me for saying "smartphone components" when I really wanted to emphasize the screens. Can smartphone screens be made in a significantly less expensive factory than print heads? Why or why not?
Well there's a reason why every flagship phone has Samsung display
Because of scale factor. LG, Philips and Samsung because of large scale production, selling screens really very cheap, much cheaper than could small scale factory.
Equipment to produce screens is not something from other world, they are not cheap but achievable for business, but on small scale will not be cheaper than priced LG or Philips screen, even without considering taxes and fees of marketplaces (could add 2x-8x of cost).
If some small factory will try to enter market, it will immediately become bankrupt, because nobody will buy more expensive than from LG or Philips.
Exist possible exceptions - some Industrial or Space or Military applications (or for example, Medical), where customer have very specific needs and could pay additional money for them.
They cannot, just like the chips they are made in very large, expensive plants. There are only a handful of display manufacturers, especially as yoi get up to big panels.
Your foundational analogy is faulty, smartphones are not easy to make.
You can buy some chips for cents, that doesn't mean the factory that made them is any less amazing or difficult to build and operate. The cost of the individual product doesn't necessarily tie to the cost of the plant.
Yes, they usually are. They're usually from the same factory that supplies Samsung, apple, etc. Samsung gets the best screens, the ones with a few dead pixels go to the no-name manufacturers. There are YouTube videos about this. There is also a whole market of used "shucked" smartphone components.
There are ink cartridges which include the print head, like HP 54/78. I think they were designed before the DRM enshittification trend took hold, so I don't think there is any way to "lock out" independent uses.