Hey lemmy. I’ve been paying out of pocket to get stickers printed from online printing companies. But its getting expensive and I think I’d like to get a printer to do the job.

HOWEVER, I’ve been avoided getting a printer, because, well, the whole thing is just a shit show. Our household went through like a printer a year for almost four years. Between ink prices, and the printers just failing, we threw our hands up and said fuck it. Not playing this game, so we shifted to printing services or the local library.

So I’m looking for a very basic (I think?) printer. Honestly, a black only printer might even be fine. I’ve heard I think that maybe Canons or Brothers are the ones you want and HP’s are to be avoided. The purpose of the printer will be to print stickers on sticker paper. What printer should I buy?

  • affenlehrer@feddit.org
    2·
    20 hours ago

    Black and white is more common in laser printers, less complex, cheaper and it takes up less room.

    Laser printers don’t just shoot color particles on the paper like ink jet / piezo printers.

    They “magnetize” a photo conductor so the toner particles stick to it and then usually transfer it to the paper using pressure and then fix it using heat. You can’t really do the first part for multiple colors at the same time so color lasers can get pretty complex to repeat this process for each color (CMKY, sometimes more).

    So why not an ink printer instead?

    • If you use them often they will cost you a lot. Printer manufacturers love ink printers because they can basically sell water (with a tiny bit of color) for the price of gold. That’s also the reason why they put you much effort into detection of original ink cartridges.
    • If you don’t use them often, the print heads tend to clog and guess what the printers use to flush them? Copious amounts of liquid gold (ink).