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.