{"id":135,"date":"2016-09-24T17:41:18","date_gmt":"2016-09-25T00:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/?p=135"},"modified":"2017-10-09T22:26:47","modified_gmt":"2017-10-10T05:26:47","slug":"xaar-128-controlled-by-arduino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/xaar-128-controlled-by-arduino\/","title":{"rendered":"Xaar 128 Printhead Driver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Xaar 128 controlled by Arduino\" width=\"525\" height=\"295\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NYTviWkTa8Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Xaar 128 is a piezoelectric inkjet printhead used in large format vinyl sign-making. It *might* be useful in 3d printing, conductive ink, or masking applications.<\/p>\n<p>Why piezo? TLDR: Most inkjet printheads are \u201cthermal\u201d: They work by superheating a fraction of the ink in a chamber, turning it into gas, which expands to force the remainder of the ink out of a nozzle. Superheating limits the range of materials that can be used in these printheads. Piezoelectric printheads are less common, and since they use a mechanical operation to force fluid out of a nozzle, they don\u2019t have to modify the state of the fluid to operate, and can work with a broader range of materials.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/reprap.org\/wiki\/Getting_Started_with_Xaar_128\">More details on the Rep Rap wiki.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/gkyle\/xaar128\">Starter source code on GitHub.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Learnings<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>While I planned to try some different materials with the Xaar 128, I started out with the Solvent Ink that it&#8217;s built for. I was mostly using used printheads that I could buy inexpensively on eBay, since new Xaar 128s are pretty expensive. Nozzle clogs were a big problem. I had to flush the nozzles every time I sat down to work. This wasn&#8217;t really compatible with an after-hours hacking schedule.<\/li>\n<li>I used flexible flat cable (FFC or FPC) to connect my board to the printhead. I&#8217;ve been burnt by overflexing ribbon cable before, so I thought this was a good idea. But I didn&#8217;t properly anchor the connection points. After some use, I started getting erratic behavior and stalling from the printhead. After a lot of debugging, I found that the leads on one end of my cable had overflexed and would break contact at certain points in the movement. Lesson: anchor connection ends so that no flexing happens near the exposed leads.<\/li>\n<li>I was never able to consistently push anything more viscous than solvent ink through the printheads. Epoxy or photo curing resin is much more viscous (eg. ~1000-2000+ cp vs ~10-20). This means these heads may be useful for something like depositing a low viscosity binder for powder printing, but probably not for depositing a material that can harden into a solid by itself. I&#8217;d love to find a printhead that can.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Xaar 128 is a piezoelectric inkjet printhead used in large format vinyl sign-making. It *might* be useful in 3d printing, conductive ink, or masking applications. Why piezo? TLDR: Most inkjet printheads are \u201cthermal\u201d: They work by superheating a fraction of the ink in a chamber, turning it into gas, which expands to force the &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/xaar-128-controlled-by-arduino\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Xaar 128 Printhead Driver&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,10,9],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-3dp","tag-electronics","tag-software"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylescholz.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}