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Re: gEDA-user: free technology printer
Making something that will squirt ink is easy. Making it go where
you want is hard. The first problem you need to solve is chemistry.
You need a resist that stays put after hitting the surface and hopefully
spread out to fill any gaps between neighboring dots. Since you are
more interested in output quality then speed you can have a fixed
target and move the printhead in an X-Y direction. You can also
use a multistep process that lays down the pattern in one step and
then uses a fixer to make it stay.
Once you have your resist you then figure out how to shoot it. If it
is water soluable then inkjet or piezo is the best bet. if not then
the "melting wax" phaser methods would be better.
John Eaton
Lars Segerlund wrote:
Now I wonder how hard it would be to modify a common printing head to spray a low temperature thermoplastic, does anybody know ?
It seem's this would be a nice project :-) ...
A heating setup, ( resistance wire or similar ), gravity feed and a modified inkjet head ( probably an older is better ) and then a feed mechanism like an old x-y plotter ( pen ), ie. the card can be feed directly from the axis of a stepper motor or similar.
Come to think of it, to scavange the mechanics from an old printer would probably be the best option !
/ Lars Segerlund.
On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:34:53 -0500
Mike Jarabek <mjarabek@istop.com> wrote:
I'd actually be happy with one that directly sprays resist on bare
copper plated PCB, for those one off basement/garage style single or
double sided board prototypes....
DJ Delorie wrote:
Is it possible to manufacture a single-pixel ink jet at home, either
a piezo one or a thermal one?
I would be happy with a single-jet X-Y plotter. Why bother with high
speed mechanicals?
Mike
--
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Mike Jarabek
FPGA/ASIC Designer
http://www.istop.com/~mjarabek
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