Inkjet + 3d printer hybrid

Hey all

I've built several 3D printers over the years, Deltas, Cartesians and a CoreXY. Now I've got a new idea and I need a little help. I was inspired by OpenDTG.com and UFOPrinters and several others that are hacking inkjets to print right t-shirts with special garment ink. They are not trying to do vertical motion. They need to support different thicknesses of garments. They even have UV curable inks. They move the bed, but I want to move the entire inkjet printer, not just the head. I think it is far simpler to hijack the printer than tear it apart and use the print head directly - even though, I recognize it would be ideal to have absolute control. xyzPrinting has a 3D printer that is adding color to the deposited filament via inkjet. I can imagine doing an entire regular FFM slice and then inkjet print an image on it. This frame could become an experimenter's platform for different approaches.

I've mounted an inkjet on a frame and have it moving like OpenDTGs machine. The frame can be built at different heights and/or widths. The garment printer controller is not the right approach, the 3D printer controllers would be better. This frame and printer could be adapted to print color and binder onto powder or uv curable materials directly onto other objects like a flatbed. Different jigs could be devised for all of these, including printing normal ink onto paper.

The Arduino that OpenDTG, UFOPrinters and others use intercepts the optical encoder which is trying to move the paper and translates that to signals to drive a motor. I may have the x and y reversed - I'm calling x across the page and y down the page. I have an MKS Gen 1.4 available to me. I plan to integrate the encoder monitoring into it. I intend to have an endstop at min and max y. At the end of each page, I want to home the y axis and move the z-axis down. So the first question is how exactly would I wire the encoder to the mks board? Second question, where should this new code go in the firmware?

Third - there must be slicers that can retain color and textures, but since few printers do full color, little has been done. The slicers could tell the inkjet to print a normal page by generating an image of the slice?

Thanks

Mike

Some thoughts:
A slicer is definitely the wrong software generator. It would try to print one color at a time and to make perimeters and infill.
Maybe you are better off writing a python script as inkscape expansion? ( If only inkscape would run stable....)

I'm wondering if a 8bit cpu is able to control the inkjets fast enough. Each pixel on the T-shirt requires 9 bytes ( 3x 24bit ) and there a many pixels in one line printed at the same time. All you could do, is writing a firmware that moves the print(head) across the shirt and synchronize the moves with the "end_of_line" code in the printfile ( sent by a PC over USB )
Unfortunately the arduino USB port is to slow to filter these signals from the datastream and bypass the data to the printhead.
But maybe you only want to control the motion of the printer by the MKS board?
I then doubt the small stepper drivers are able to move the whole printer fast enough. Acceleration has to be very high, otherwise you'd have to find a way to slow down the ink-output while accelerating.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2017 02:23AM by o_lampe.

Hi o_lampe

Quote
o_lampe
Some thoughts:
A slicer is definitely the wrong software generator. It would try to print one color at a time and to make perimeters and infill.
Maybe you are better off writing a python script as inkscape expansion? ( If only inkscape would run stable....)

I'm after a 3D model - inkscape is not 3D. Blender would be better. However, one might want to include infill and print the perimeters in full color.

Edit: The slicing software could produce image files of each slice and after homing each layer, tell the inkjet to print the slice.

Quote
o_lampe
I'm wondering if a 8bit cpu is able to control the inkjets fast enough. Each pixel on the T-shirt requires 9 bytes ( 3x 24bit ) and there a many pixels in one line printed at the same time. All you could do, is writing a firmware that moves the print(head) across the shirt and synchronize the moves with the "end_of_line" code in the printfile ( sent by a PC over USB )
Unfortunately the arduino USB port is to slow to filter these signals from the datastream and bypass the data to the printhead.
But maybe you only want to control the motion of the printer by the MKS board?

Yes I only want to coordinate moving the printer. The point I made was the printer already does so much, ignoring all of that is preventing moving forward.

Quote
o_lampe
I then doubt the small stepper drivers are able to move the whole printer fast enough. Acceleration has to be very high, otherwise you'd have to find a way to slow down the ink-output while accelerating.

The t-shirt people - including Epson's own printer - already have the process working. All I am looking for now is to move the bed vertically between "pages"/slices/layers.

Thanks

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2017 10:14AM by myearwood.

... there are several slicers for DLP-printers, which exports the layers as SVG or bitmap images into a numbered sequence, which can be normally printed like a series of documents - simply insert some steps in Z before loading and printing every new image, and you'll get the 3D representation

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

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

Hello Viktor

I'll look into NanoDLP.

Thanks

Hey all

I would like to pay someone to integrate inkjet encoder monitoring and show me how to wire it to a mks gen 1.4. PM me for info.

Thanks

Hi Viktor

What slicing software and firmware and control boards would be used in a DIY material jetting 3d printer, such as a home-grown Stratasys PolyJet?

Thanks

Mike

Hi Mike,

my last relevant activities were maybe 10 years ago with testing the freesteel slicer and an Arduino1280 ... look here for some more actual hints:
[www.freesteel.co.uk]
[3dlprint.com]

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

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

This is such an amazing project. I am trying to do the same thing but i am a newbie in this so it's kinda hard.

Can you give me suggestions? I also wanted to repeat and do something similar, but unfortunately my engineering knowledge is not that good. I just bought myself a special T-shirt printing machine, which I use to print T-shirts for my online store. It was actually difficult to find at the same time not the most expensive, but at the same time, a well-functioning T-shirt printing machine that could serve me at least 3-4 years. Lucky for me there are many different posts where they usually help to choose such products based on the need and budget. Like for example. This site contains 11 of the best T-shirt machines and reviews on them, as well as instructions on how to pick T-shirt printing machine.

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2020 03:41AM by VDX.

Quote
JohnSnow148
Can you give me suggestions? I also wanted to repeat and do something similar, but unfortunately my engineering knowledge is not that good. I just bought myself a special T-shirt printing machine, which I use to print T-shirts for my online store. It was actually difficult to find at the same time not the most expensive, but at the same time, a well-functioning T-shirt printing machine that could serve me at least 3-4 years. Lucky for me there are many different posts where they usually help to choose such products based on the need and budget. Like for example. This site contains 11 of the best T-shirt machines and reviews on them, as well as instructions on how to pick T-shirt printing machine.

I see what you did there VDX ^_^

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http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

... it's a test

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

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

Quote
VDX
... it's a test

Pretty sure JohnSnow is a spammer though

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http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

... I'm thinking so, too -- but now it's "disarmed" and on the list ... and the old post gets some attention

*** EDIT *** - at the second glance notized, that he "rewoked" the link again -- so he didn't hear the shot ... will delete the account soon

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2020 03:43AM by VDX.

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

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

Hi all

myearwood here again. It's been a few years at least. I hope I'm not breaking any rules by resurrecting this thread. I was working on a then North-American patent-pending invention. When that patent ran out, we went world-wide and someone had attempted to patent almost the same idea and lapsed their patent. Therefore that patent is now in the public-domain. I plan to come back to it. I have pivoted slightly. Same hybridization, but for a different purpose.

I am looking for help with 3 things:

1 to make a new support feature in Cura or other slicers. This support feature will be as if the 3d printed object is immersed in liquid or a powder. The mold feature in Cura is almost what I'm after, but not automated enough.

2 I also want to slice the combined object and support material into multiple 2D 2-color images. One is the support and the other is the to-be-printed object. In fact, it may be required to do more than just 2 colors.

3 When the print starts, I want to home the 3d printer and have it move the inkjet along the y-axis. I can link the inkjet to the x-axis crossbar. When the inkjet signals it wants to move the paper, I want the 3d printer y-axis to advance. When the inkjet reaches the end of a page (layer) and ejects the page, I want to move the z-axis.

Is there a way to have the 3d printer control board monitor the output of the inkjet and drive the other axes?

Thanks

... no problems with reviving old threads, if helpfull

Maybe you can think about "rolling paper on a drum" instead of stacking sheets?

Much faster (no pause for stacking needed) ... but slightly more complex slicing geometries, than horizontal only ...

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

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

Thank you Viktor.

It has to be "stacking sheets". There is no way for the layers to adhere to a drum. I have so much of this operational. I promise it will be amazing, but I cannot reveal too much as yet.

... good luck!

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

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

Thanks Viktor. I look forward to revealing it!