How can I hack a printhead?

Hello everyone,
I was just wondering if it is possible to hack inkjet printheads (Piezoelectric or thermal)?
I want a way to control ink drop injection, out of each printing nozzle.
I do have this honey comb grid/mesh surface. Each hole has a diameter of roughly 0.8mm.
[imgur.com]
I need to shoot ink droplets into one particular hole at each time. So for example, as you can see from the following picture, at a given time I want to shoot the ink through the Red holes only then at another time I would like to shoot the ink drops to the green holes only and so on.
[imgur.com]
I was thinking of using an inkjet printhead for this purpose. I was thinking of overlaying printhead nozzels on top of my mesh and send orders to the printhead to activate only some specific nozzels at a given time. But I don’t know how to control printheads like the way I want and I don’t know if that is possible or not? Is it possible to hack a printhead so that you can send commands on which nozzle to be activated or not?
I know there is an open hardware arduino module called InkShield. But I don’t think you can control each and every particular nozzels in it. Has anyone had any experience with InkShield before?

thanks

You might be in the wrong forum for that information. Ink jet heads don't work anything like 3D printers.

Quote
ElmoC
You might be in the wrong forum for that information. Ink jet heads don't work anything like 3D printers.

RepRap is more than 3D printers. Even if RepRap were only about 3D printers, many 3D printers are based on inkjet technology: 3DP 3D Inkjet Powder printer, Y-Tec Plan B, Pwdr printer, and so on...

There are a lot of great projects and resources about hacking inkjets and building DIY inkjets on the RepRap forum+wiki:

Forum:
* DIY printhead

Wiki:
* Scratchbuilt Piezo Printhead
* Reprappable-inkjet
* Heated Piezo for Jetting Wax

jjoll, are you able to use two separate inkjet mechanisms, one for each color, and then scan them into place over the regions where you want to deposit ink?

... if you can Find Matt Gillilands book "Inkjet Applications" - he shows how to control an HP inkjet nozzle-wise.

I'm developing a similar "printing" system with piezo-driven nozzles for medum and high viscous pastes - [forums.reprap.org]

The nozzle can "shoot" droplets with up to 3kHz and the droplet size is down to 30 microns when heating the paste.

But it's a bit more than "pricey", compared to the costs around DIY-RepRap printers

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Viktor
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Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2016 11:03AM by chris33.

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Quote
MattMoses

Quote
ElmoC
You might be in the wrong forum for that information. Ink jet heads don't work anything like 3D printers.

RepRap is more than 3D printers. Even if RepRap were only about 3D printers, many 3D printers are based on inkjet technology: 3DP 3D Inkjet Powder printer, Y-Tec Plan B, Pwdr printer, and so on...

There are a lot of great projects and resources about hacking inkjets and building DIY inkjets on the RepRap forum+wiki:

Forum:
* DIY printhead

Wiki:
* Scratchbuilt Piezo Printhead
* Reprappable-inkjet
* Heated Piezo for Jetting Wax

jjoll, are you able to use two separate inkjet mechanisms, one for each color, and then scan them into place over the regions where you want to deposit ink?

Thanks Matt, I actually have stumbled upon johnrpm's DIY printhead forum in reprap . That is why I am posting this question here. As you mentioned, there are a few fascinating forums and wikis regarding DIY printheads but if I can, I am not really trying to build a printhead from scratch because as I was checking the pictures these DIY printheads seem to be quiet bulky for my honeycomb mesh structure. Preferably I want to find a way to control/hack already existing high resolution printhead.
Also sorry to confuse you, I am not going to deposit different colors of ink. I will be using only black ink. by coloring my dots, I was trying to say that , at the beginning I am planning to deposit my droplets in red holes then after 2 seconds I will be depositing the droplets to the green holes. I was using colors to tags different holes, but the actual ink drops are black.

... what ink and what droplet size do you want?

The HP 51604A inkjet cartridge is pretty easy to "hack" - ist's simply identifying the right pins and pulsing them with something above 70 Volts, to get a droplet out of it.

As already said in my previous post, there is a complete description with schematics and software in the book "Inkjet Applications" - [www.amazon.com]

I have the book and tested with other ink-jets, but actually developing paste-dispensers with high-viscous materials and pretty expensive (around 9k$) heads from Vermes ...

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Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]