Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Could the Cube be used to make replacement filament cartridges for itself?


Recipe: Print one filament cartridge, fill it with remaining filament. Repeat until you have several empty filament cartridges.


Everyone thinks you mean cartridges with filament in them. Yes, you might be able to print new empty cartridges.


Can an inkjet printer make more ink cartridges?


No, the 2d printer can't print 3d objects.


-3 points? Ha ha, HN, humorless as always.

The joke, here, of which there are two, is that of course you can't print another cartridge. You'd spend 5kg of plastic to print a 4.9kg cartridge.

The second joke is that while you could conceivably print a cartridge housing, and fill it with counterfeit filament, it still wouldn't work. This because Cube uses the same business model as HP or Stratasys (I assume) where the printer's cheap, but the cartridges are expensive. Both HP and Stratasys use cartridges with chips in them that keep track of how much filament's been used, and it's probably too much to hope that Cube cartridges will be as easy to hack[1] as Stratasys cartridges. A $5 cryptocard chip more than pays for itself if it doubles your profit margin, and if the printer phones home, it'll be real hard to break the scheme.

1: http://haveblue.org/?p=938




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: