Homemade arduino printer

If you want to make your own high resolution printer (maybe not so high res), you are at the right place. This Instructable will show you how to do with two dead cd/dvd drive and a pen (pilot, whiteboard marker, whatever you have) at the best lego-printer style.

Here is how our printer will work: we type any message in terminal then the message will be printed (as dot matrix) and after the message is printed the program will wait for another message.

For this magnificent printer you will need:
1) 1 x Arduino (I've used the Duemilanove)
2) 2 x H-Bridge (SN754410)
3) 3 x small dc motors from any cd/dvd drive
4) 3 x switches from the same cd/dvd drive
5) A pen or marker
6) Wire
7) Rubber string
8) Sheave
9) Stick with round rubber like the rollers in a real printer, the wheels from a toy car should work.
10) Acrylic, wood or whatever you have to build the structure.
11) 5v and 9v power supply

If you have an old printer you can use its structure and save some time to build one.
Once you have all that is time to build the structure.

Step 1 Build the structure

   Now you have to build the structure with any materials you want (even with lego), I choose acrylic because it's cheap and easy to work.

   All you have to do is to mount a "U" Structure and add two tubes where our printer's head will move, also add the supports for rollers and the sheave.

   As said before, if you have and old printer you can use it and skip this step.

Comments

[yigal]

Ze Frank gave a Ted talk on this program called "scribbler". I would like to do an art installation as a combination of the above and the scribbler.

http://www.zefrank.com/scribbler/

Is there someone who could help me build one of these (hopefully in the Toronto area). I don't expect anyone to help me out for free (although that would be cool). If compensation is needed, I will pay for my education (what better thing could I spend money on?).

[gunnergrady]

Pretty cool. This is something I would definitely like to try.

Here's a similar project by Matthias Wandel that he built in 1986:

http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/tech/printer.html

Good job!

[madscientist007]

hey gr8 project.i was thinking about building one but i thought it cant be build using dc motors rather than steppers so pls send me the pdf..
email: [e-mail]

[talesgurjao]

You can use step motors, but I didn't tried because the intention was to keep a low cost using only pieces from an old cd/dvd drive, which includes the dc motors.

[rimar2000]

WOW! You are awesome!

[ElvenChild]

Holy fudging cow this is so darn awesome