An Arduino ri 6602 Ink Cartridge Printer

Maker Norbert (AKA "HomoFaciens,” or roughly, the making man) has always wanted to construct his own inkjet printer. Now, as a prototype for a “slow, but continuously working printer for a planned art project,” he’s created an inkjet printer based on the HP 6602 cartridge, fastened to a discarded 3D printer frame.

The electronics for the build, along with the ink cartridge itself, is screwed onto a hardboard carriage assembly on the former 3D printer, and manually adjusted to the correct height using the Z-axis spindles. An Arduino Uno provides X/Y control of the device via A4988 driver modules.

The HP 6602 cartridge is activated through the Arduino’s 5V outputs. These are amplified with the help ULN2803 transistor modules as well as 12V computer power supply pushed up to 18V by a boost converter. These 18V signals are sent to the cartridge, allowing it to heat up and drop ink on the paper below. The cartridge design utilizes multiple nozzles, which must each be triggered for a tiny fraction of a second to work correctly, with pauses of at least 800μs before the same nozzle is activated again. Norbert is using a ribbon cable to control the cartridge, a soldering directly to it would be extremely difficult.

While the setup features a variety of reused parts, it appears to work quite well, and he shows how he was able to improve print quality during experimentation in the video above. Future plans include a way to get it to print continuously on rolls, plus further development with the print head itself.