often we hack for the excitement of making something new, as well as often we hack to push back the dark veil of ignorance to shed fresh light on a problem. as well as sometimes, like when turning a utilized label printer into a point-of-sale receipt printer, we hack since we’re cheapskates.
We state that with the utmost respect as well as affection — there’s nothing to be ashamed of when your motive is strictly pecuniary. In [Dan Herlihy]’s case, hacking a inexpensive sibling label printer to utilize thermal paper indicated saving $300 on a dedicated receipt printer. however it likewise indicated beating sibling at their “Razor as well as Blades” service design that keeps you getting their costly proprietary labels. A pattern of holes in the plastic label roll tells the printer what size labels are loaded, so [Dan] defeated that by breaking off a piece of the plastic as well as gluing it on the sensor. To persuade the printer that ordinary thermal paper is label stock, he printed up a little strip of paper with the exact same pattern of black registration stripes that appear on the back of the labels. Pretty creative stuff, as well as it lets him print high-resolution receipts for his electronics shop on the seriously cheap.
[Dan]’s hack is simple, however may experience from wear on the paper encoder strip. maybe this sibling hack utilizing the gears as encoders will supply some motivation for long-lasting fix.