My hacked HP printer flatbed

[Graham S]

Just noticed the thread on pcb printing thought you might like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a14zELKPw8M

I'm working on a 3D printer in the Zcorp style.

Graham

[Switcher]

Cool!

How big is the machine?

[Graham S]

its printing on to a piece of A4 paper, that's about the same size as US legal.

Graham

[epineh]

That is cool, I hope you don't mind but I posted the link on the PCB printing page, I'm sure everybody following that thread will like to see your printer

There has been loads of talk about doing just that, but not much more, nice work.

How is the repeatability?, it would be great to do double sided boards this way if the printer could be "homed" exactly every time.

Do you have a head cleaning method?

Russell.

[Graham S]

repeatability is getting better:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOT8bHff80k

Heads:

When not in use take them off and put them in a tupperware box with wet paper towel. To clean wipe on a lint free cloth soaked in distilled water, wipe in the direction you print. This is advice from a video in the oem section of HP's website.

I've printed on to PCB but I have not tried etching, in theory I see no problem with it but as the machine is the precision is more of the artistic and 3D printing quality.

Graham

[epineh]

Nice work, as for PCB printing, so long as the ink the printer uses is pigment based it should work, dye based inks come off when etching.

I assume you are using a microcontroller for the smarts, did you make your own print drivers or hack the mechanical part ? (or a bit of both)

Russell.

[Graham S]

the microcontroller just drives the gantry by syncing the stepper motor with the rotation of the origional feed motor encoder, this means that the origional print engine is still doing all of the work. Esentially it just acts like any other printer as far as the PC is concerned it just happens to go back and forth.

I'm using the parallax propeller as the microcontroller, it is awsome and made development very very easy.

Graham

[epineh]

I agree with you about the prop, started playing around with one myself, I can see lots of applications, especially with CNC. Time is a problem for me right now but it is something I want to spend more time with.

I have made two LED's blink at different speeds...cutting edge stuff I know

The support is great for the prop, and there are so many objects already done, I can't wait for things to settle down here so I can play...

Russell.