R2C2 electronic board - printerhead output

[George Kriel]

Hi everybody,

I am new to this so please bear with me.

I am in the process of building a 3D printer to print metal ink, and want to use a inkjet printhead to deposit the metal ink.

I have ordered the R2C2 electronic's board to control XYZ.

Now instead of an extruder i want to connect a printhead.

Anybody out there have any ideas on how to do it.!!!!

[George Kriel]

 Noboby out ther with any thoughts!!

Let me put it this way, if I have the drive electronics for the print head can I connect it to the R2C2 electronic board to give motion feedback to the print head for positional information????

Any thoughts will be welcome.

 

George

[Jorge Pinto]

2012/11/30 George Kriel <gkri...@gmail.com>:

> Noboby out ther with any thoughts!!
> Let me put it this way, if I have the drive electronics for the print head
> can I connect it to the R2C2 electronic board to give motion feedback to the
> print head for positional information????

Sure you can. R2C2 firmware holds and controls the positional
information so it can send it over UART on expansion header.

[George Kriel]

Hi Jorge,

 

Thanks for the info.

I am more of a technical- machinical guy and or not the brightest when it comes to software and electronics.

So I appreciate all you guys help and advise.

Thanks,

 

George

[bobc]

Without knowing the interface required by the Xaar controller, it is impossible to say. I had a look on the Xaar website, but I didn't find anything useful. So, what is the interface? Presumably if you have the development kit from Xaar, then is it documented somewhere in there.

On the R2C2 side, you would need to change the firmware to track the position during movement (currently it only updates the position between blocks), and to output that somehow.

[Peter Brier]

I have engineered printing systems and integrated almost all major
printheads.
Currently I use the R2C2 board to drive a printer with a single nozzle
DOD printhead.

What head do you want to drive? Do you want to make use of the R2C2 for
the complete datapath, or
only sending trigger signals to some controller board (like the Xaar XUSB?)

Sending trigger signals is easy, sending all the data requires some more
work (I've done this for the LAOS board,
where the complete bitmap data is received and used to drive a laser,
see: laoslaser.org).

With regards,

Peter.

[George Kriel]

Hi Peter,

 

Thanks for your info,

 

The idea was to use the R2C2 board for the complete data path.

But being not that clued up on electronics and programing,.more of a technical-machanical guy.

 

 I think in the end I will most likely use the Xaar XUSB controller for the Xaar 126 print head, as i still want to add a laser to sinter the ink after each print layer.

So i am learning and trying to figure this all out.

 

Kind regards,

 

George

[George Kriel]

Hi Peter,

 

What are you using your printer for and how is the print qaulity of the single nozle DOD print head ?

 

George

[Peter Brier]

What project are you working on?

If you want to use the XUSB, just hook the extruder step pulse to the XUSB encoder input pin.
With the proper extruder scaling you can use it as a trigger.
You may want to connect the PD input to an output of the board, to sync the start of the bitmap.

[George Kriel]

A 3D printer that can print precious metal ink and then sinter the ink with a laser.

Like I said i'm more of a machanical guy with a idea,  so will most likely have to hook up with somebody that's got a lot more know how about electronics and programing then i do.

But I take it this is not the place to dicuss it.

If your are interested you can contact me on my e-mail: c...@lantic.net

 

George