[tetrep]

Not sure how this is hooked up, but there can be quite a bit of heat generated if it's possible for people to print (lots of) fully black pages, like wasting someone's fax toner/ink but with a risk of fire.

[vidarh]

Finally an chance for the good old "lp0 on fire" error message to be true:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux...

[dghughes]

Receipt printers are thermal and they print all day long.

Thermal printers use a thin wire that heats up in certain sections. The paper is heat sensitive. Funny though I discovered you can erase a thermal image using a highlighter pen (at old job where clerks had to highlight a section. Ooops!)

The paper is probably more of a danger since thermal paper supposedly is loaded with BPA.

[IanCal]

I'm not saying there is a risk of fire but

> Receipt printers are thermal and they print all day long.

Not continuously, and not fully black pages.

[rpastuszak]

> The paper is probably more of a danger since thermal paper supposedly is loaded with BPA.

Apparently not the case any more.

[Schinken_]

There are several types still in circulation from what I gathered.

The common white/greyish ones might still be a health risk.

Supposedly these blue ones that some shops have adapted is a lot better (and even recyclable?).

https://www.koehlerpaper.com/en/products/Thermal-paper/TH_Bl...

[mschuster91]

> The paper is probably more of a danger since thermal paper supposedly is loaded with BPA.

That's been banned in the EU since 2020, the question is if its replacement BPS isn't just as bad... [1]

[1] https://echa.europa.eu/de/-/bisphenol-s-has-replaced-bisphen...

[rpastuszak]

I think this is just a regular thermal printer. No risk of fire.

Source: I'm doing something similar with a Cat Printer: https://untested.sonnet.io/TIL/weekly/40#Cat+printers

[internetter]

Oh, you did https://sit.sonnet.io/! I love "useless" websites like this, there's just something comforting about them that I can't quite place. For whatever odd reason, this particular one randomly reminded me of this brilliant package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/emdash-extending-forever-into-...

Keep up the good work :)

[mdrzn]

Recently bought that same printer on Temu for like $5 so this is very interesting. Would love to connect it to something allowing me to control it remotely.

[rpastuszak]

This might help: https://untested.sonnet.io/Cat+Printer+–+tools+and+resources

Easier to set up if you're using a PC/Linux/Intel Mac as there are some issues with ARM/Apple SoC. Start with the repo in bold.

[bArray]

I imagine the engineers of the printer thought of this and that there is a thermal cut off.

[londons_explore]

They're designed to be able to print solid black. Some printers even have an 'invert' mode which prints white on black. It doesn't look very good though (uneven), which is why it's rarely done.