When it comes to computers, it seems like the only thing that matters is speed. The more the better, in general, and the same applies to peripherals. We want the fastest network adapters, the fastest video card, and the fastest printer. So why in the world would anyone intentionally build a really slow inkjet printer? For art, of course.
At least that’s the story [HomoFaciens] tells us in the video below. His efforts are in support of a friend’s art project, which seeks to print slowly but continuously on a roll of paper. [HomoFaciens]’s printer is based on an H-P C6602 inkjet cartridge, one of those high-priced consumables that make buying a new printer more attractive than replacing them once depleted. After figuring out how to drive the printhead — 5 to 6 μs pulses of 18 volts through a ULN2803 Darlington array driver chip seemed to do the trick — he mounted everything to the gantry of an old 3D printer. It’s interesting to watch the images slowly being built up — something that printers usually hide from prying eyes — and to see how the DPI count of the printer can be increased by interlacing each printed line.
Near the end of the video, we get a glimpse of his “tattoo gun printer”, which reminded us of all the other cool things he’s done over the years. From a CNC machine made from paperclips and cardboard to an encoder made from a wheel of resistors, [HomoFaciens] has some interesting designs that you really should check out.
Thanks Dan for promoting another one of my projects! Hope the running Hackaday Price will push the evolution of this printer and all the other projects I am currently working on:
https://hackaday.io/project/172421-my-hackings-2020
Pretty cool seeing the ink appear on the page! Have you experimented with different heights from the page? and/or shooting the nozzles at different angles? What kinds of distance [and spread] can we expect?
I will probably test to print on curved surfaces (table tennis balls) and see what distance and angles this print head is capable of.
Sounds great, but it’s already got a Z-axis to adjust the height… No? You haven’t experimented with it already?
No. The prints were good enough for what I have in mind even with 5mm distance and that’s what I wanted to figure out with this quick & dirty setup.
I would think you can speed up a bit by printing in both directions not just ‘left to right’…
Of course I can, but as told in the video:
1. This is just a quick & dirty setup to check if the cartridge works
2. The project was started to get an extremely slow printing machine.
Plotter?
This is mine, with tool changing:
https://homofaciens.de/technics-machines-3D-printer-Zonestar-Plotter_en.htm
Thank you very much, looks cool!
These projects remind me of my childhood,
when I had the PenMan plotter robot.
It behaved like the turtle in Logo language,
but supported HPGL, too.
Never mind.
Watched the video.
Seems to be a “plinter” rather. ;-)
Are there any print heads available that could be repurposed to do liquids other than inks?
I would love to hack on something that spray a binder (like say heated parafin) onto a metal powder bed for a sintered metal 3d printer. Something like a Xaar 128 [ https://reprap.org/wiki/Getting_Started_with_Xaar_128 ] might do the job if it can take parafin at 60c.
> one of those high-priced consumables that make buying a new printer more attractive than replacing them once depleted.
A lot of them still ship with starter/setup cartridges that are only partially filled.
back in the day when there was roaming computer hardware flea market shows we used to buy “refurbed” cannons for 20$ that came with ink
I miss those. There were some small efforts that were kinda scammy, but the decent size ones could be amazing. Last one I went to in fact, I got insane deals, was around 2005 new case with PSU $10, was a bit of a knuckle slasher, but fine, new Abit motherboard with teh AMD 760 $10, Thorougbred Duron (Applebred) $5 I think. Found a used GF 4 4200 for $20 there as well. Got home threw it all together, found the magic recipe for the 760/1 that ran it over 166Mhz, had the duron storming along at 2.4Ghz, got the 4200 to 4600 speeds, 12,000+ on 3DMark2k1, best bang per buck evarrrrrr. Sure 64 bit was out and bleeding edge, but it was hot stuff for the time still.
Please don’t buy a new printer every time the current one runs out of ink.
Yes, ink is overpriced but it is not really cheaper to buy the printer. Those printers which sell for less than the replacement ink cartridge actually come with only partially full ink cartridges. When it comes to money per amount of ink actually buying the replacement cartridge is almost always the less bad deal.
Throwing away a perfectly good printer is a waste of resources and produces unnecessary pollution.
Meanwhile the final “World Printer” has arrived in Graz, Austria. Besides slowly printing the world map. the machine also destroys the print after 24 hours:
https://youtu.be/3Qqkj0rjJhI