Horizontal Feeder

The image above shows the completed printer with feed tray attached. At first glance you might see it as a different printer, but a careful look reveals it is T10. Actual printer front is away from you and back is towards you. The head carrier beam is removed altogether for easy access and safety of the head mechanism.

The white block is the sponge for waste ink absorption. Actually this is an utter waste and I have emptied my new cartridge set just on preliminary tests. Every power on cycle extracts a generous amount of ink from the cartridges through nozzles, into the absorption pads. Even you don’t print anything; power on-off cycles can effectively empty your ink cartridges. I learned the lesson hard way, so you are warned.

The empty block next to white absorption pads, is where the majority of plastics needed to be cut-off. Upon successful plastic surgery, you will end up with an empty space like what you see in the image. If you are not very careful on plastic removal, you may end up ruining the structural rigidity of the injection-molded plastic base. Remove minimal plastics giving way to the tray. Keep everything else intact.

The new tray can be made of various materials. I have used 3mm clear plastic sheet, since one was lying around from a previous project. Being clear, it is possible to easily align the tray, and to show you clearly how it is constructed. Even wood, plastics or wife’s chopping board can make a good tray for your printer. The tray only needs to be slightly larger than A4 sheet. But you can have a good judgment of the width, once you remove plastics and see what’s remaining underneath to support the tray. You may also require providing support angles/brackets from underneath the tray. I have used L shape metal piece (from an old UPS frame) which can be clearly seen underneath the tray on the middle. The piece of metal gives added strength to the rear of printer structure; where the strength was weaken after removing plastics. So it is providing duel role.

For testing, I have only used small drops of Super Glue, while the tray was balancing horizontally and vertically. The top surface of the tray should be on the exact plain created by the two paper rollers. The best way to do the alignment is to keep a rigid and straight piece of block on the two rollers (I used a metal ruler on its edges) and level the feed tray to it. Depending on the thickness of paper tray, you may have to remove some plastics and adjust mounting brackets. I have used the cut-away plastics from the printer to make my brackets. If you pay some attention, the pieces of plastics thrown away can be easily used as L and C brackets.

The strip to be seen on the right of the tray edge is used as a guide for paper or media to be fed through. It is also a clear plastic strip, cut from the same board. I have used 3 dots of supper-glue to fix the strip to the tray.

You can clearly see the paper sensor on top right of the tray, but due to its importance, I will be writing a separate article with enough detail.

The power supply of the printer came in a separate box, bolted underneath newly installed paper tray at the empty block (as seen on the image). Since nothing hindered the space, I can choose to fix this in its original place after the modification is completed, but for now I believe it is easy for me to keep it away, and connect as an external part, only when power is needed for testing.

Cutting it off

Okay, now the fun part. Never enough mentioning I was feeling chicken when the printer was just unpacked on my table and I had a screwdriver on the hand, ready for con(di)struction. It really took many minutes before I finally made my firm decision for the dissection. First push of the screwdriver trying to carefully releasing plastic locks cracked open the case, yes CRACKED open, meaning the plastic lock was Brocken. With this very first destruction incident, all courage and energy for moving ahead was flowing from everywhere. There was no stopping until I finally ended up dismantling all necessary parts from the injection molded plastic printer base.

Humm, I remember when I got the first scratch on my vehicle. Before that I was terribly carful with the interior and exterior. But after, well, you probably have the same experience.

Okay, let’s get back on track.
The next big thing was to identify how I am going to fix the horizontal feed tray. Well, before that, and even before you open the printer, it is advisable to give it a few test runs (in original condition) and get familiar with its working (mainly the head movement, timing and delays). In my case, I was directly at the modifying stage. A careful examination revealed there are plenty of plastics to remove (cut away) but at the same time EPSON engineers have designed it in such a way that certain guides (well actually those are plastic indents, edges, wedges etc. for giving structural rigidity) are already visible and can follow easily for cutting it along. Epson engineers may not have thought of our rude intentions, breaking and making something else, but the design definitely helps our process.

The goal is to allow a flat bed to be fixed leveling the top surface with the master feed roller. So, keeping this in mind, you can easily remove everything on its way obstructing our flat bed. In my case, I have used 3mm clear plastic (acrylic sheet), which was lying around. In fact, it gave me good visibility when mounting and aligning the board. Some people have used other plastics and even wood and plywood with varying thicknesses. Thickness of the board matters, since it governs how much plastic you need to remove (cut off). Keep in mind, you need to align top surfaces of the board and master feed roller perfectly, or else the suffering is eminent at the end, trying to make it work.

For cutting plastics, you may ideally use a DREMEL (or any rotating tool), but I didn’t have that luxury. A plain old Hacksaw blade was the only tool I used to cut it across, but occasionally I used brute force with my paper knife on some easy to access parts. If you are not carful with the tool, especially a power tool like DREMEL, you may end up breaking most vital plastics easily. Keep in mind, the structural integrity of the molded plastic base is vital, since all moving parts shake and vibrates it vigorously in printing. Cut only the minimal plastics giving way to the horizontal feed tray. Keep everything else intact.

I used only a hacksaw blade to do this so can you. It is easy if you pay attention to what you doing, and more importantly knowing what you are doing. Set of hand-files and 600grit sand paper was used to soften the rough edges made by the hacksaw.

Remember; remove all moving parts from the base before attempting the cut. This includes the whole head carrier beam, head cleaning mechanism, ink absorption pads, feed rollers etc. Cutting plastic is messy, and dust can go everywhere and cleaning from tight corners can be next to impossible. Specially, wool, cloth, absorption pads etc. attracts dust and plastic particles, so removing them before cutting process is vital. Otherwise, you will have to mask other parts with paper and tape, and do the surgery. However, removing them gives you a good sense on internal working of your printer, so I prefer that way.

Kavee

The Printer

If you chose MISPRO ink (hard to source in most part of the world), then the printer hardware is quite a variety (HP, Cannon and others), and so do the complexity of hacking process. More printer hardware more methods to follow.

Anyway, my experience is with EPSON Stylus T10, so the whole printer hacking process follows is based on this printer. Said that, a whole range of EPSON Stylus printers (supporting DuraBright inks) works almost the same, and surprisingly similar inside. So the understanding gain with EPSON T10 is quite enough to convert most of EPSON printers, and also any other inkjet printer for that matter.

EPSON T10, T20 and C90 known to be very similar in hardware, so if you own one, it will be a pleasant surprise for you.

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WARNING

All electrical appliances are lethal, and it CAN KILL YOU. Unless you don’t know electricity, and not sure what you are doing, don’t even think of dismantling a printer (or any electrical devise).
Less lethal, but equally disturbing is that you will void warranty or any kind of service agreement, the moment you open up the printer (other than the customer accessible cover front).

You are warned, and I am not responsible for any kind of incident which leads to the facts mentioned in this blog. If you decide to hack your printer you are on your own. Nullification of warranty, your life or anything is not my slightest responsibility, but your own. If you are not agreeable, then just stop reading the rest of the posts, please.

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Okay, enough on warnings, and back to the hack.

I bought an EPSON Stylus T10 brand new for this conversion less than US$50 including a set of cartridges. I should mention the wired feeling I got when I decided to put the screwdriver between the casing joint and pop open the cover! Hey crazy, the printer is brand new!!! Hum you got to have a new printer dismantling to get the exact wired feeling I was experiencing. That was part of the total experience package, anyway.


Kavee

The Ink

The key to success on inkjet printing comes with pigment inks. Hold on, what is pigment ink? Right, you have to check on Wikipedia(www.wikipedia.com) for a good answer. But for the sake of discussion, normal inkjet inks (I would call it house-hold inkjet) are water based, which is essentially soluble in water. I know you have experience this unpleasant situation, when spilling the tea on the most important document....

On contrary, pigment ink is not water soluble, which means you can spill tea without a problem, humm I mean to say no problem on the ink , but nothing about the paper itself which will get screwed anyway.

Okay, to cut long story short, you need Pigment Ink for PCB printing. There are two known options available at the time of this writing.

1) Use EPSON DuraBright ink (I am not from Epson, nor do it get commission from them for publicity)
2) Use MISPRO brand ink. (No, I don't get commission from them either!)

Option one restricts you to use only EPSON printers (since the ink wont come in jars, but in cartridges which wont fit in other brand of printers.

Option two comes in jars/bottles, so you can fill it on other printer cartridges, so can use a variety of printers. I used the words "variety of printers" and deliberately avoided using the words "any other" simply because world is not that fair, and you may be out of luck with some printers.

Can I fill EPSON cartridges with MISPRO ink? well, yes, but not very easy. EPSON guys have given some intelligence to the cartridges, buy incorporating a microchip/memory in the cartridge and it keeps track of ink usage. Once the cartridge is impty, the chip will keep that in mind, even though how much ink you put inside. Only way out is to re-set this chip. There are few methods around, but the sure and easy way is to buy an EPSON chip resetter (not selling by EPSON of course). With this unit, you can set the chip status to FULL, even though you don't have any bit of ink inside the cartridge. Why the hell Iwant to do that? yes, you want to do that since you may only need one color (Magenta is said to be the magic color) for the whole process of PCB printing (unless you want to print on non-coper side with fancy colored images), and the EPSON printer is so stuborn and it refuse to print if Black ink is out.


Kavee

Why printing directly on PCB?

Why bother, when there are plenty of other methods for DIY PCB projects.

1) Press n' peel
2) Toner transfer
3) Etch resistance pen (drawing by hand)
4) Photo etching

all these can be done at home, and plenty of advise is readily available on internet. So why bother, you may think.

Imagine if your inkjet printer can print directly on PCB, ready for etching, comparing to other tedious and sometimes expensive methods.

So what's stopping, you might ask. Humm, nothing, but the printer itself. If you feed a PCB (or any hard material other than paper) into your house-hold inkjet printer, it will be ruined in a moment, if not instantly. This is because the normal inkjet printer is not designed to handle hard materials, nor hard material tend to bend over the curved paper feed path (no wonder it is being called hard material !). Even if you manage to slip PCB into the inkjet, it will hit hard by the printing head, permanently ruining the mechanism. Simply because the head is aligned just enough to clear normal paper thickness.

Even if you manage to get the PCB through the head, you will not be happy with the printing quality. Why? because normal inkjet inks are designed to print on paper, not Copper. Since Copper does not absorb water (8th grade science), ink will get puddle on the surface, and a slightest move or touch is enough to ruin the already ruined print work.

So DON'T even think of doing the experiment, it simply won’t work.

Hey, this blog is for inkjet printing of PCBs, right. If it don't work, then why the hell you waste our precious time, you may ask!

Yeah, there is a process for getting it the right way, invented, practiced and shared generously by few others (prior to me). All I have is the knowledge I got from predecessors plus a wealth of experience gathered doing this by myself.

If you want to take the easy path, without the hazel and dassel and lot of disappointments along the way, then just follow the blog. I have already got my feet wet, so you only have to jump on board dry.

Kavee

First Thing First

Welcome to my small corner of the world !

Here, I will share my experience on home brew PCB process, having an emphasis on Ink-Jet to PCB direct printing methodology. Humm.. can I slip through a PCB into the printer and get it printed? well, yes if you have CD printing facility, but there is more to learn. But it will be a huge NO if your printer is a generic inkjet, only works on plain paper. My effort is to convert a normal inkjet (under US$ 50 printer) into a PCB printing machine.

So in the process, I will be discussing various other things, such as DIY SMD techniques etc.

My posts can be found in varous other forums, but I will be publishing all my work here, for yor conveiniance.

Kavee