Printer control boards for CNC????

[thuffner3]

Hello all,
I'm in the design phase of building a home brew 3D printer.
I'm thinking because of the lightness of components. That perhaps I can utilize most of the guts of a few old printers.
My question is this, Can I use the controller cards of these old printers? If so, what do I have to do to make this thing work, with say! conventional g-code or other such available software?

TIA
Neil

[ger21]

Originally Posted by thuffner3 Can I use the controller cards of these old printers? If so, what do I have to do to make this thing work, with say! conventional g-code or other such available software? TIA Neil

I wouls think you'd need to write your own software, similar to a printer driver. I could be wrong, though.

[HayTay]

Can I use the controller cards of these old printers?

What old printers are you referring to? What type of motor(s) are in the printers (unipolar, bipolar, dc, servo)? Can you identify the motor driver/translator ICs used to drive the motors? Armed with this information I'm sure someone in this forum can provide some guidance!

Harry

[thuffner3]

Thanks Harry,
I don't have that info as yet.
But I do have an old HP, Canon, & an HP laser jet.
The laser jet is the one I would be thinking about as well as the other HP.
I would think that the components on an electronic side of things would be some what compatable??

Neil

[vladdy]

You will get more useable parts out of an old LARGE dot matrix printer..primarily the stepper motors themselves... a few had servo's but these were in the 400lb plus sizes...
The driver circuitry won't be much help, although some used newer stepper driver IC's [Sankyo for one], these are final driver assemblies for the most part, and don't usually contained the related phasing logic [step input to phase output], as this was contained on the main PCB itself..
Some of the older plotters can be converted over, such as Roland, and some [Tektronix] can be used by writing a conversion utility for the GPIB interface, but these have smaller motors, and while they can be used for 'pen plot' drawings, they usually don't have enough power for more than a foam cutter or very small MDF / balsa cutter..
I have used both the Roland and Tektronix for direct draw on PCB material with etch resistant pens [Staedler Mars red], and they work well for that purpose, a bit slow, but still handy..
still should have them in a corner someplace..

[Stevie]

I ripped a HP plotter apart just last week; just the B size (Max)
It had 2 beautiful Pitman brush motors with encoders; but alas these will be going in a model sub counter rotateing

[thuffner3]

Hi Vladdy,
If you take a look at Zcorp.com you see the basic idea I'm shooting for.
It looks as though it uses a modified print head to carry printing medium, and the
media itself is nothing more than startch. I think this thing is doable from a home built point of view.

what do you think?

TIA
Neil

[vacpress]

you can sorta yse old printer step drivers. for a '3d printer' you do not actually have a physical contact, so the printers can be much smaller.. you dont even need a Z axis for a zcorp style machine, just a big vat of plaster powder(they use plaster, or starch.. plaster seems easier to deal with)

an HP II clunker has a decent motor in it, but the shaft is a nasty gear.. anyways, to use old printer driver boars, you probably have to build the phase circuitry, or better, program a PIC. most printers, like the HP II have these large driver transistor arrays, you can leave the power supply in tact and the connections to the board, and jumper in your own drive circuitry..

uhm... an idea, you could maybe just use a inkjet gantry mechanism, and hope the ink is enuff to cause the plaster chemical reaction... write software that cuts a 3d model into subsections and uses a regular windows print driver to print each page... a custom something-or-other could be done to make the tray of powder drop one level.. i believe the zcopr uses plaster with some filler... its common knowledge what the filler is.. do some research..

the main advice is to get 3 xylotec boards if you dont like the inkjet idea... which i think is promising..

good luck