Comments on: one pin diy dot matrix printer

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:42:05 +0000

Back in the day I had a Silver Reed EXP 400 “Daisy Wheel” printer. I could print flowcharts on it. It did that by using only the “period” to bang out the lines. Of course printing out a 1 page text only resume took 7 min so you can imagine how long it took to print a one page flow chart.

By: Ishkabibble

Ishkabibble — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:24:17 +0000

Yes, it is. “Matrix” refers to the patterns of dots making up characters. It has nothing to do with pin configuration of the head.

If it did, even real matrix printers wouldn’t be considered “matrix” printers, because their pins comprise a single, vertical line, not a grid.

Tom said:
>Is it really a dot MATRIX printer if there’s only >one pin? :-)

By: austin y,

austin y, — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 08:47:31 +0000

what time zone are you in will? because it’s 12:47 am where i’m at and i don’t see the next days hack ;)

By: drew

drew — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:43:02 +0000

i was going to build something like that once but with a led pencil and then make a text fort that was copied from my hand writing then i could write papers for school and type them with spell check and other stuff like that you should consider trying something like that i would like to see how it turns out.

By: Groxx

Groxx — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:07:41 +0000

@Tom: you can have 1-element matrices, so yeah.

By: stillboy

stillboy — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 18:45:14 +0000

Hey, check out his brother's site too-- he has a pretty good writeup on his build of a cnc pcb router.

http://cq.cx/pcb-router.pl

and this: mechanical pong -
http://www.cyberniklas.de/pongmechanik/indexen.html

By: thetable

thetable — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:36:44 +0000

The whole site is well worth spending some time at. Dude seriously must have way too much time to create some of the crazy stuff.

By: agent420

agent420 — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:55:52 +0000

Gotta love Fischertechnik for mechanical prototyping!

I wonder if he got his ideas from the Fischertechnik Plotter kit from 1985 (they also offered a simpler version way back in '77)...

http://www.ulrich-mueller.de/plot85.htm

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:45:05 +0000

Is it really a dot MATRIX printer if there’s only one pin? :-)

By: Ziggit

Ziggit — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:04:29 +0000

I remember coming across this a while back, I’ve always wanted to try it, but haven’t ever gotten to, maybe I can try using a floppy drive instead of the solenoid seeing as they are super abundant

By: mastershake916

mastershake916 — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:45:13 +0000

Wow, this hack is just insane.
The hugely complex DIY involved.
Also, I think you meant ball point pen, not pin,but no biggy.

By: bird603568

bird603568 — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:12:56 +0000

sweet updated before midnight. too bad it cant make music

By: curious george

curious george — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:05:12 +0000

Heh I wonder if this can be adapted to make tatoos on your arm. Done in five minutes!