hallo everybody

Is there someone who can tell me how to make a color cnc painter.
How does the system like the bladejet works?
Who can give me more info about how to make.

jurgen

If you wanna do artistic paint to wall with a spray paint visit http://www.hektor.ch/ and download hektor.pdf for simple and interesting ;)

hope it helps

Fer

hallo

that's not were i'm looking for.
the system like the bladejet looks more intresting.
Who nows how this system works?

thanks

publitime- i have the exact same question, and this is what I know so far.

1-there are companies that make CNC gantry type machines with an inkjet head. these are for sign printing, packaging, etc.

2-there are even companies that put inkjet heads on the end of a robot arm to print on 3d surfaces

3-there are generic print drivers and inkjet driver board setups to do all this.

4-I have no idea where to start looking for more info

5-I havent seena ny prices listed, so im assuming its probably in the 2000-5000 range to start with a preengineered system

the idea of hacking an inkjet head to print would be amazing. i would love it. LOVE. I would pay hundreds of dollars even to see such a thing done. I have considered trying it myself and even have 2 or 3 inkjets sitting around waiting for me to own an oscope, logic analyzer, and FINALLY a working PIC programmer to start such a thing. I bet there is information out there about all this, I just have been busy with other projects first.

I will donate a working inkjet to anyone "qualified" who is willing to try this. by qualified I mean you should at least know how to program a PIC chip and realize that controlling an inkjet head will require some decent electronics skills and lots of time and research. I will donate lots of other parts to such a project - i have literally dozens of dead and or working surplus printers available to me. my parets own a repair company that sees hundreds of printers a month...


the thought of putting a inkjet head on a gantry really appeals to me, and i know its possible... another interest I have is to make my own additive rapid prototyping machine using an inkjet head and either 2-part epoxy type glue, plaster and water, or some other ink-jet deliverable system...

please come back and let us know what you find!

hallo

I think a printsystem like the bladejet does not use printerheads like the one in desktop printer etc.
the reason for that is that i works with paint and not with ink.
It must be something like airbrusches who spray the paint.
But how do they control the airbruches?
How you can make G-code ore something like that from a foto to control the airbruches?
Look at the system with the wire and look at the result.
It looks great.
The system with the wire looks lot easyer then a engineerd cristal printerhead.
It just works with a wire and a airflow to blow the paint from the wire to the wall.


jurgen

you could fairly easy create a 4 color spray-type inkhead.. to do it you have to do a few things.

1-break down the image into CMYK files. Process these files to create graduated xyz coordinate files that send the required pulses to move the gantry, and release the proper amounts of ink or paint or whatever through nozzles. inkjets have it easier cuz they dont need to regulat flow i dont think, they jsut use different lengths of time since it happens so fast? i could picture 4 dual-action airbrushes with 2 high speed hobby servos as actuators on each airbrush. dual action airbrushes allow for both pressure and flow controls. exactly what is needed. these servos are closed loop positionable, so they can be programmed with a PIC or other microcontroller to recieve a color demand and use a lookup table or several to produce the right amount of pressure, flow and color mixture... ideas on this?

I have no ideas at this moment about how to begin.
The mechinical part is easy but the electrical and software part will be difficould i think.
I have build a cnc mill to mill plastic letters and he works great.
But this looks something else.
Rebuild a dual action airbrush must be easy.
The X Y and Z axis are no problem i think if the system works with 3 axis ore is that wrong.
Are there more axis thene that.
To get the 4 colors ( cmyk ) out of a picture is easy with photoshop.
But for the rest i think we have to write a program to run the steppermotors.
Maybe it will be better to use a constant airflow and just regulate the paintflow?

jurgen

well i think its easiest to break it down into several chunks. the most fun for me would be the printhead color mixer program. i would put it in a PICmicro or Basic Stamp2. It would not be that precise at first, but fairly easy to start. i would likely make it a 1-wire network or serial device that recieves a command like:

;make green - gantry moving 180inches/minute
cyan on 2.5us/motion speed : spray pressure 45%
yellow on 2.5us/motion speed : spray pressre 45%

so the transmission from the host to the software on the printhead would look like :

c;2.5;45:y;2.5;45:off

but just an 8bit word or something... i dunno that much about it - i use PICbasic, it would be easy with quickbasic. to calibrate colors would also be fairly fun

this device so far is fairly cheap to make:

aluminum extrusion for frame: $100.00 if you just use 1x1x.125 square alum tube
stepper motors:cheap from used printers
control-tronics:cheap,as the tourque to control is low -$15 per axis - 2 axis. $30
8 hobby servos: $80 for the cheap $10 ones - $200 for very nice ones
servo driver board: 20-45
misc:$100-300

the great thing is, a single long linear rail is needed for the gantry- it has a very light and predictable load. the other side can be a floating bearing or something. this device can also probably pay for itsself within 5-10 sign jobs @$50-100 per job.

the hard part is the software that vectorizes the input and controls the whole thing.... tha'd be some printer driver.....

I have no ideas at this moment about how to begin.
The mechinical part is easy but the electrical and software part will be difficould i think.
I have build a cnc mill to mill plastic letters and he works great.
But this looks something else.
Rebuild a dual action airbrush must be easy.
The X Y and Z axis are no problem i think if the system works with 3 axis ore is that wrong.
Are there more axis thene that.
To get the 4 colors ( cmyk ) out of a picture is easy with photoshop.
But for the rest i think we have to write a program to run the steppermotors.
Maybe it will be better to use a constant airflow and just regulate the paintflow?

jurgen

my first idea was to use the electronics from a desktop inkjet printer but there are some problems i think.
firts the steppermotors in a desktop printer are not strong.
So you have to made a system to use the signals for the steppermotors to control other and bigger stepperdrivers.
Second how can you use the signals that controlling a piezo printerhead on a airbrush system?
thene there is a problem with the printerdrivers.
Most drivers are limited to a small printing size.
So the original printerdriver will not work for big prints.
Maybe there are controllers on the marked for a system like the bladejet who are ready to use .
Do you have a idea how many axis the bladejet is using?

I am guessing that the major obstical using a printhead would be ensuring a level and flat canvas.
I think that is why you need to use the wire blowing method that they talk about on that site.
A printhead requires contact to the material been printed.

Hi
The ink systems we use in our factory does this:
paint meets compressed air in a valve, from there the outlet tube ends with a nozzle with a fixed orfice, depending on the atomized size of particle you want (amount of paint). The valves themselves are controlled by a P.L.C. that waits for inputs (ie outputs from your cnc program) and in turn fires the outputs on the P.L.C. that control the valves that spray the paint. We are only marking parts for identification purposes.

thats much like what i have described. exactly - only the resolution has to be upped. the finest airbrush lines are probably like .05in thick? one good thing about the airbrush would be it dosent need to touch the work piece.

and as for motors - the HPII printer is easily found for around $5 each - these have a large unipolar stepper motor and a driver. ineligant as it is, this driver can be used to drive this thing. for real accuracy it needs closed loop control, however, most hobby cnc people will attest that a well designed system is fairly accurate in openloop

When you guys figure it out I need one that can paint on a 3D surface. Make it easy. Just top down. For my Digital Terrain Models I cut out. Hate painting them by hand.
Something like these guys have would be nice. STL (http://www.solidterrainmodeling.com/)
Here is a poor excuse for what I do. A bad version of Mt St Helens.

Donny

www.carco.com
these are the guys we use. Looks like you could "bodge" on a spray gun from your local hardware store and mount it to your cnc, you'd have to figure out a way to control the trigger on the spray gun.

Ooops, sorry,
made a mistake, the site is www.carcousa.com check out the pdf files

newer heard about the system ware the paint meets compresed air in a valve.
What printer does work with that system.
Can you give me more information about that.
Does the system work with paint ore inkt?

the system from carcousa looks good but!!!!!
I don't think the system will works for full color printing.

there ARE olutions out there in a variety of formats.

http://www.idtechnology.com/Products/7_Series.htm <-sorta what we are talking about

http://www.oce.com/NR/rdonlyres/eghh6u6zmmrmtcxhv55pbjef6vb65aojw46ubnekmk66cthitn3rt4ty464lzdlikuesdcza5owcnz4ajnetijs5apb/at220.pdf <---the 175,000$ version!

http://www.manufacturingtalk.com/news/rod/rod129.html <- a system integrator

http://www.pixation.com/pp_busin.htm <-bladejet paintjet system.

ok -the bladejet is sweet- i never paid much attention to it till just now. wow. and so doable. the hardpart for any of us - the software, is the fun part for computer nerds. if only we had some computer nerds around... real ones.. who love to write code... (looks around.. none. damnit)

its depressing that my roomie is a CS grad an all he ever does is watch mind numbing TV and play drums.. he thinks my projects are too big and wont ever help... slacker

If you're really interested in creating a CNC printer I would write the software for you. I believe such a program could be cooked up pretty quickly if written in Perl, however I'm not too sure how quickly it would be able to pulse a controller (I'd need to do some testing to find that out). Windows or Linux, but Linux preferred.

There. Gauntlet thrown :)

Here, this will help you see how to use a PPort.
http://www.lvr.com/jansfaq.htm

the thing needs to:
1) move x,y axis steppers.
2) decode an image into seperate colors
3)spray paint in a bitmapped pattern. basically, break image into grid, see colors in grid, produce them.
4)control the paint mixer Board

i think i could make a paint mixer board. and since i do stuff for non commercial apps, i might just try spraying some oil paint off a wire tonite with my aircompressor. we need to do that now... i dunno about that wire feed. there may be a better way? ideas? i like this project. very difficult though.. if the print engne could load .jpg or .bmp or other bitmaps, that would be good.

im confident there are code examples out there to at least decode a bitmap and get a chart of color data. the control of the mech-tronics can be done with xylotecs? the steppers on the bladejet looks way oversized.

they have their software for download - try it out? see what it does? i can provide some programming support on a project like this also..

a design on wheels like on the bladejet site could be cheap to build also.. make it 10ft long, put it on nice wheels.

putting the colorimage to a rasterfile would be an other possible way i think.
Thene you have to work with dots.
Whene you look at a very big poster from nairly you would see the dots.
The are printed in lines horizontal and vertical.
The only thing is to get a board for controlling the dots.
steppers on the bladejet ore wirejet ore from vextra a think.
The look simular to the one i have used on my cnc milling machine.
It are really strong steppers.
I do control theme with the drivers from NC step you can see theme on
www.nc-step.com
Maby there are boards who will do the whole thing on the hobby market.

would it bee possible to use simple printerboard from a inkjet printer and use the signals who go to the piezo printhead.
There must be a way to amplifier the signals.
those ampified signals can bee used to run a stepperboard ore a solenoide.
With the solenoide you can run a airbrush ore a selfmade printhead.
Will it be possible to do changes in the original printerdriver?

Tonite i finally opened and tested something i bought a long timeago :
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=46720

10.00

it has too broad a spray, but still a better spray than a paint can, and it costs less over time cuz even at 1$ a can, Spraypaint gets expensive.

I have started building a gantry on wheels. this device will be a mess. basically at best, i hope to recreate a ground-locked version of "hektor" if it works, i can adapt it to a wall by using chains to drive the thing up and down....

i will post my CAD Data when it is further developed

I drew this up tonite..
drat cant attatch photos :( sorry guys.

heres some url redirects:

ill start a new topic

here:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=28507#post28507