Ink jet printing onto models?

Hi evryone

Just curious to know if anyone has any ideas how one could build a ink jet head capable of printing onto the surface of a component.

Once something has been built it would be great if one could decorate it using inkjet technology.

The component would need to be sprayed with a baryta layer prior to applying inkjet. Black and white printing would require three heads (light light black, light black & either a matt black or photo black. I do not know how an inkjet head is constructed. Ink would have to be delivered using a remotely controlled arm with multiple heads at least one for each colour positioned to apply the ink from an angle 90 degrees to the surface. For colour 8 heads would be required. A total of nine heads is needed of which a maximum of eight would need to be active to decorate any one model.

The ink could be gravity fed to the heads using narrow tubes rather like one does with a bulk ink supply system installed on a commercial inkjet printer (e.g epson 2400). The inkjet heads on such printers would not be usable for an application such as this. The heads for suchprinters are build into a solid block which moves backwards and forwards over paper fed over rollers. We would need very fine nozzles on an arm which could move oaround a stationary component and applying the requisite dyes into nooks and crannies!

Standard inkjet design is either piezo force ink out through tiny nozzles. The alternative is a heater which heats a bubble of ink to do the same job. All the commercially available heads are designed to glide over a flate surface and are far too bulky for the application I have in mind.

Does any one have any idea how this could be engineered??

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/2011 12:56PM by vizion.

i like the idea but thinking about how to make it, makes my head hurt. you would need a few more degrees of freedom

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[mike-mack.blogspot.com]

Just a thought, you could do laser engraving on abs. the white and yellow abs, brown and then go black. You will want to have air flow so the lens stays clean. The reason for laser engraving is mainly for pictures and text. Details that is difficult to print. Laser will go strait down, and as long as your surface is within the focal length everything should show fine. my laser cutter cuts about .4mm into abs when it makes it black, and about .1mm when it makes it light brown. i don't know what the range is but seems like you could have shades of color, or use a halftone method. sorry it is not inkjet, but you mentioned grayscale as well.

I think you would need something like a six axis robot with the printhead on the end, but I expect it would still not get into some nooks and crannies, I suppose it depends on the complexity of the part,......I did see a printer like a mouse, that is moved freehand, but still only on a flat surface.

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Random Precision

here is a video showing a laser half-toned image of a wolf being printed on abs plastic. it shows that tone control, is possible.

I just used a wades extruder i had lying around to print on. i used a laser powered up to 10watts and a black and white images that was originally a color image and converted to black and white with Floyd_steindberd dithering for halftones. the way lasers work, you can focus the beam to a point around the wave length size. using a blue ray laser at 1watt would probably do the same as my c02 laser did, as long as abs absorbs most of the light energy at that frequency.

Cool, but it does nothing for printing with ink. nope. just another way....

jamesdanielv Wrote:
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> >
>
>
>
> here is a video showing a laser half-toned image
> of a wolf being printed on abs plastic. it shows
> that tone control, is possible.
>
.
> Cool, but it does nothing for printing with ink.
> nope. just another way....

Hey you have just blown my mind -- you have pushed me to think how I might just get the result I want but use an alternative process.

Any ideas about how to construct a head to hold the laser so that it could be programmed to follow a path which keeps the laser:
a. pointing in the right direction.
b. maintain a laser path that keeps it a specified distance from the model surface.





Here is an approach which will, I believe work for black & white

Layer 1
Coat a model with a chemical glue that will seal the plastic from layer 2
Layer 2
Coat the model with Baryata which will provide a white base and a high quality surface to receive an image
Layer 3
In the darkroom coat the model with a light sensitive silver emulsion.
Layer 4
Still in the dark use a laser to expose portions of layer 3 to light.
Layer 5
In the darkroom process the model in a suitable photographic developer, wash & fix. This should produce a high quality black & white image.

For colour
The exercise will need to be repeated 3 times [for RGB] or four times [for CMYK]. In this case the silver is converted during the development process into the appropriate primary colors for each individual layer.

This is getting close enough as a concept to encourage me to build a Mendel for experiment.

There are some serious issues which will need addressing
1. Control of light scatter.
2. It seems the head would need its own robotic control in addition to the main axis movements for the mendel.
3. It would be good if I could scale the mendel to give me a 40cm x 50cm base.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2011 06:20AM by vizion.