On 21/12/10 21:51, William Wilson wrote:
> Gilliliand's book does cover the nice old 51604 cartridge. Each nozzle ha=
d its very
> own control pin. A simple voltmeter was all that was needed to decipher t=
he wiring.
> Newer cartridges have 100s of nozzles and the pins are divided into zones=
 which makes
> hacking them a pain.

Well, my box of five "slightly out of date" 51604 cartridges has=20
arrived. I doubt the Millmax pins are going to be of any significant=20
use; they're just too big. They'll make nice probes for my ICSP adapters=20
though.

I've just soldered some Wire-wrap wire onto a cartridge and used=20
Araldite Rapid to hold the wires on the base plastic. Next job is to=20
make up some kind of holder.

What I want to do with this is use it to label paper component tapes=20
with part value and a 'tick' for every ten parts (count the sprocket=20
holes, divide by a user-configurable "X" value). I'm getting sick of=20
counting and labelling the things, if I can get within one count of=20
actual then I'll be happy.

Bonus points if I can make the thing print on plastic tapes... though I=20
suspect I'll have to buy a couple of permanent-marker refills and do=20
some tweaking of the IJ head to make that work.

> For themal inkjets (HP, Cannon, etc.) you are usually looking at 20V for =
a maximum of 10 microseconds.

So that's basically an MC34063 boost converter (to get the 20V) and a=20
ULN2803 or two... Tie it to a PIC micro, and write some code...

--=20
Phil.
piclist@philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/
--=20
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