interest in a Propeller Inkjet Kit?
fullspeceng
Posts: 76
I have the opportunity to buy a large number of older used mini printers (4.5" X axis travel) and a large quanty of new cartridge holders that use the HP 51604A ink cartridge as in the previous but discontinued Serial Inkjet printer kit: http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/prod/robo/InkjetKitDocs-v1.0.pdf
The 51604 is a very simple to drive inkjet head.· It has 12 nozzles at 96dpi.· If you apply 24V at 4.5us between a pair of pins then it fires a droplet.· The documentation for the HP 51604A is very well documented in Matt Gilliland's book Inkjet Applications (check amazon.com).· I've rewritten the serial inkjet software to use the parallax propeller to drive the heads (very easy).· I've made some improvements for raster image printing.· You can communicate with the pc host and load data into the propeller ram.· Since the kit comes with a stepper motor driven X axis, if you assume a constant Y velocity (say on a CNC you issue: F1 G01 Y-5 G01 Y5 over and over) you can print a full graphics image by simple timing of the zigzag pattern (explanation will be illustrated on my website later).· The X axis is very small and light so you could even just bolt it to the side of an epson inkjet printer to get full XY motion!
Anyway, I'd like to offer it as a kit.· What you get for $140:
Removed and Tested Print assembly:
-1 ink cartridge holder (this is essential because the ink cartridge pads are .55mm on a flat glass substrate so you can't attach a connector to them easily)
-1 unipolar stepper motor driven X axis with very nice mounting holes (4.5" of travel makes it super small and light -> I have pictures to upload later) -> unipolar is very easy to drive: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ih/doc/stepper/control2/connect.html
-1 extra stepper motor to build a Y axis
PCB kit with 2x ULN2803 chips with connections to the 40pin DIP propstick usb (and holes for headers to connect to another u-controller of your choice), FFC connector for the ribbon cable and headers for the stepper motor
If you solder the ULN2803 chips, the FFC connector, Propusb and stepper header you will be able to have a fully working printer.
Or for $60, I can sell you just the 51604A ink holder with ribbon cable + surface mountable FFC connector.
Not included:
-HP 51604A cartridge ($13 at amazon.com) -> I suggest someone build a CIS (continuous ink supply)
-microcontroller (suggest you buy the propstick usb for easiest development from Parallax but you can use other micros - $80)
-24V power supply ($10 from ebay or $10 5V-24V conversion chip from Digikey installable on pcb)
-12V power supply for driving the stepper motors (also $10 on ebay or make a 12V to 24V converter and use only 1 power supply)
I bought 5 samples and was able to drive the inkjet heads and move the stepper motors around.· I'll take a video and send a link if people are interested.·
Since this is such a low volume and low profit project, I'm doing this as a service to the hobby community.· Software updates and support will be limited to forum and mailing list support from community users.·
There are many improvements that I suggest people take up.· Particularly, a lower cost option for the propeller chip (the 40 pin dip version only costs $8 instead of $80 but you need to add the pcb layout for the usb connector, voltage regulator, eeprom and crystal, not a huge deal).
Even then I'm not sure if people are willing to spend $140 on it due to the lower 96dpi and hack it yourself attitude.· 96dpi is fine for many things such as 3d printing on powders where you want large ink volume anyway.·· Everything necessary is listed in Matt Gilliland's book and the barrier to entry has been availability of the cartridge holder and easy to use pcb.· Parallax used to give you a lot more for less money but they had the infrastructure in place but is now discontinued.·
Anyway, if you are interested in this kit (just a rough idea no commitment necessary), let me know so I know how many cartridge holders and printers to order.· This needs to be a volume order and I will have plenty for everyone.· I can have these in stock by next week.
If someone else wants to do the pcb layout/circuit design to improve on the project, I will support you fully.
In addition, I've been working on our own higher end inkjet printer development using Xaar and Epson heads.· Xaar head products could be ready in a month but the heads are $600 each and you need 4 to get CMYK colors so products would be at least $3000.· From that project, we have a full windows print driver for printing regular .bmps and dithering them to create colors/greyscales.· We can separate an image into the 4 half tone CMYK channels with dithering and our own RIP software.· We're also working on an STL slicer that should be completed shortly to do the 3d printing.· These will be available later at a nominal charge.
The 51604 is a very simple to drive inkjet head.· It has 12 nozzles at 96dpi.· If you apply 24V at 4.5us between a pair of pins then it fires a droplet.· The documentation for the HP 51604A is very well documented in Matt Gilliland's book Inkjet Applications (check amazon.com).· I've rewritten the serial inkjet software to use the parallax propeller to drive the heads (very easy).· I've made some improvements for raster image printing.· You can communicate with the pc host and load data into the propeller ram.· Since the kit comes with a stepper motor driven X axis, if you assume a constant Y velocity (say on a CNC you issue: F1 G01 Y-5 G01 Y5 over and over) you can print a full graphics image by simple timing of the zigzag pattern (explanation will be illustrated on my website later).· The X axis is very small and light so you could even just bolt it to the side of an epson inkjet printer to get full XY motion!
Anyway, I'd like to offer it as a kit.· What you get for $140:
Removed and Tested Print assembly:
-1 ink cartridge holder (this is essential because the ink cartridge pads are .55mm on a flat glass substrate so you can't attach a connector to them easily)
-1 unipolar stepper motor driven X axis with very nice mounting holes (4.5" of travel makes it super small and light -> I have pictures to upload later) -> unipolar is very easy to drive: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ih/doc/stepper/control2/connect.html
-1 extra stepper motor to build a Y axis
PCB kit with 2x ULN2803 chips with connections to the 40pin DIP propstick usb (and holes for headers to connect to another u-controller of your choice), FFC connector for the ribbon cable and headers for the stepper motor
If you solder the ULN2803 chips, the FFC connector, Propusb and stepper header you will be able to have a fully working printer.
Or for $60, I can sell you just the 51604A ink holder with ribbon cable + surface mountable FFC connector.
Not included:
-HP 51604A cartridge ($13 at amazon.com) -> I suggest someone build a CIS (continuous ink supply)
-microcontroller (suggest you buy the propstick usb for easiest development from Parallax but you can use other micros - $80)
-24V power supply ($10 from ebay or $10 5V-24V conversion chip from Digikey installable on pcb)
-12V power supply for driving the stepper motors (also $10 on ebay or make a 12V to 24V converter and use only 1 power supply)
I bought 5 samples and was able to drive the inkjet heads and move the stepper motors around.· I'll take a video and send a link if people are interested.·
Since this is such a low volume and low profit project, I'm doing this as a service to the hobby community.· Software updates and support will be limited to forum and mailing list support from community users.·
There are many improvements that I suggest people take up.· Particularly, a lower cost option for the propeller chip (the 40 pin dip version only costs $8 instead of $80 but you need to add the pcb layout for the usb connector, voltage regulator, eeprom and crystal, not a huge deal).
Even then I'm not sure if people are willing to spend $140 on it due to the lower 96dpi and hack it yourself attitude.· 96dpi is fine for many things such as 3d printing on powders where you want large ink volume anyway.·· Everything necessary is listed in Matt Gilliland's book and the barrier to entry has been availability of the cartridge holder and easy to use pcb.· Parallax used to give you a lot more for less money but they had the infrastructure in place but is now discontinued.·
Anyway, if you are interested in this kit (just a rough idea no commitment necessary), let me know so I know how many cartridge holders and printers to order.· This needs to be a volume order and I will have plenty for everyone.· I can have these in stock by next week.
If someone else wants to do the pcb layout/circuit design to improve on the project, I will support you fully.
In addition, I've been working on our own higher end inkjet printer development using Xaar and Epson heads.· Xaar head products could be ready in a month but the heads are $600 each and you need 4 to get CMYK colors so products would be at least $3000.· From that project, we have a full windows print driver for printing regular .bmps and dithering them to create colors/greyscales.· We can separate an image into the 4 half tone CMYK channels with dithering and our own RIP software.· We're also working on an STL slicer that should be completed shortly to do the 3d printing.· These will be available later at a nominal charge.
Comments
I have been playing with some conductive polymers, and their conductivity is quite amazing. I have seen these printed with a Dimatix print head but obviously don't have that kind of money.
96 dpi is a great place to start as I'm expecting clogging
Don't need anything immediately, but put me down for 1 kit for starters. I can possibly help with a pcb too
cheers
tubular
I already own a propeller propusb so there's no real motiviation to make a cheaper board for my own use especially when the SX design by parallax is freely available. I really like the propeller platform though so it'd be nice for someone to make a cheaper board to use the bare chips parallax sells.
It gives a much better print platform for experimental tinkering than other large number nozzles. The Xaar heads are great and easy to drive/mount and fill with ink but again they cost $600 each and if you clog them it's not under warranty.
Post Edited (fullspeceng) : 8/6/2009 12:28:41 AM GMT
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propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5
Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.
The only thing I would change is substitute the SX with a propeller. Currently I hook up P0->P7 to the first ULN2803 and P8-P13 to the second ULN2803. I can send the schematic for this part and let you decide if you want to make it. I can link to your site as the provider for the updated schematic.
I used to make all the parts through hole for easy DIY assembly but if you can get it assembled surface mount cheap, that's even better.
I've been waiting for somebody to pick up this product concept again. It was a sad day when we had to EOL this particular product. It was difficult to get certain parts and the manufacturing cost was really high. I remember that this part also required several new Pick and Place feeders, pushing it into EOL land. But so many customers enjoyed using it and printed a variety of characters (some Chinese, images, etc.) on a whole bunch of surfaces (eggs, wood, paper, people, etc.). We even had a Boe-Bot attachment that let the Boe-Bot spray characters on a paper. What's very nice about this TIJ 1.0 technology is that it is very forgiving - you can print characters from 1.8" to 1/2" or even higher!
Be very careful with the voltage/current driving circuitry for the inkjet print head. It's really easy to destroy these at $12 a pop. Drive them·out of the timing specification·and they explode.
By the way, after we ended this product I received a letter from HP's legal department very clearly indicating that their inkjet cartridges are not to be filled with any chemicals, food coloring, etc. Don't bother trying to refill these.
Ken Gracey
Parallax Inc.
Geesh..
I'm guessing they would be very unhappy with my trying to fill an HP cart with rear defroster repair
liquid for the purpose of printing functional circuits on paper.
Neat kit! A little pricey for my own experimentation, but I'm pleased to see someone doing it!
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Visit the: The Propeller Pages @ Warranty Void.
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NYC Area Prop Club
Prop Forum Search (Via Google)
·
It isn't printing anything in this one but I'll upload one that does once I finish the design.·
If someone else wants to partner to make the pcb, we can reduce the price down to $110 just for the x axis assembly and inkjet holder.· Salvaging them out of old printers, cleaning·and testing them is pretty manually intensive task.
I'll upload more pics and videos to my site once I have the chance to create the webpages.·
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2616421.htm
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBladeProp, RamBlade, TwinBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: Micros eg Altair, and Terminals eg VT100 (Index) ZiCog (Z80), MoCog (6809)
· Search the Propeller forums (via Google)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBladeProp is: www.bluemagic.biz/cluso.htm
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Toys are microcontroled.
Robots are microcontroled.
I am microcontroled.
If it's not Parallax then don't even bother. :-)
·
I have changed my avatar so that I will no longer be confused with others who use genaric avatars.
Mini-Din/PS2 connectors are for sale! 5 for $1! PM me if you wish to make an order.
Cheap·shipping unless specified!··········150 left!!··
If you mount it on a CNC machine or Reprap (http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/RepStrap) then you can write gcode to determine the path the inkjet is following.
On the inkjet head side, nothing needs to be known, only spit out ink from nozzles so the firmware can be kept very simple. All the calculations can be done on the PC side and streamed to the printer.
Mounting on a CNC machine + laser scanner and you can have really cool products like this:
You would laser scan (easier than it sounds, just triangulate a laser line + ccd) on the PC, calculate the path on and send the g-code to the CNC with a specific feedrate. The head is moving and the inkjet will be firing to print on 3d objects (like this flower).
Or you can build something like the 3d zcorp printers, etc, etc.
I just wanted to bring this inkjet technology back into the hobbiest hands.
The HP head is $13 from amazon [noparse]:)[/noparse]
If you load the image into memory from the PC, the propeller can "paint" the image by waving it over the page like this but much more flexible: http://www.xyron.com/enUS/Products/Xyron_Design_Runner.html
The propeller really makes a lot of this projects easy to do if there's an easy to use circuit and the cartridge holders are available.
It's funny Ken said not to fill the cartridges because HP used to sell (or still does to OEMs) the HP 51612A http://www.newageinc.com/pdfs/HP 51605R.pdf
This is an EMPTY cartridge that you can fill with your own fluids. I googled this paper where the Army filled it with different stuff: http://www.springerlink.com/content/m8834771113g67g5/
Printing sugar water is used in the Zcorp 3d printers with HP 10 heads.
Very interested in 3d printer. Was thinking of making one of these http://fabathome.org/
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propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5
Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.
I use a 4.5us pulse and a 1ms delay between ejections. You can see it's almost a constant stream.
The code is very simple but I had to write it in assembly because the BS2 spin functions had around a 20us minimum time with waitcnt.
Instead, I wrote a decreasing loop compare that burns 89 instructions (4 clock cycles each) and verified it's exactly 4.5us on the scope.
There's probably a more elegant way to do this so if anyone knows of a spin object with 1us pulses, let me know! Also I just took the first assembly example from the manual and modified it a bit. Once I have a bit more time I'll look at it more carefully to make it more elegant.
I'll put the circuit up along with the source code to my site this weekend.
Maybe I missed something but once we buy a cartridge isn't that ours?? I don't remember HP asking for a signed contract when I go to the local Staples to buy an ink cartridge. Once we own it we can pretty much fill it with whatever we want. I can understand them saying they can't be held liable if anything BAD happens (perhaps if someone goes for a darwin award by using a flammable chemical) but sending nasty gram legal letters telling people exactly what they can/can't do with something they buy and then own isn't cool.
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propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5
Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.
Any sources with a more reasonable price?
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John R.
Click here to see my Nomad Build Log