Josh Koffman wrote:
>
> There used to be people on eBay that sold plans to turn various printer
> models into CD printers, presumably by allowing them to pass the thicker
> material through the machine.

Interesting.

> I think the only way to get a small size PCB to
> pass reliably is with some sort of carrier.
> if you did use cardboard, perhaps you could
> use little spikey wheels along the edges to move it along. Something
> like tractor feed on a dot matrix printer, but without preformed holes.

I think this is in the right direction, what would
be better still would be to move the printer along
using a tractor feed type system and have all boards
placed on a flatbed. The positively registered feed
would save all dimensioning problems as there could
be no slip.

Since the paper feed is usually a stepper motor
maybe you could make the printer movement as a
leadscrew/threaded rod etc then just make sure that
the steps/inch is the same so it would use the same
printer drive hardware.


> I hope you come up with something useful in regards to the ink and then
> share :) The gun bluing sounds interesting, will it work with regular
> print heads though?

It's not actually "blueing" as that is a nasty
chemical process. The "prussian blue" is simply
an alchohol based INK used in metalwork to aid
in marking out the metal with a scriber. It's a
dark blue/purple and adheres well to the metal and
is cheap in large tins. Viscosity should be fully
modifyable by adding alcohol or drying it out a bit.


> I'd love a machine that could print directly onto
> PCBs. Part of the reason I hand wire all my projects is it's just easier
> (in my current situation) than doing a PCB.

Yep I do a lot of veroboard (stripboard) work for
one-offs and being able to do small boards in
minutes would be very handy. I'm thinking in
conjunction with the $20 hot air SMD solderer
we discussed here a year back you could do nice
small apps in minutes.
-Roman

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