Homebrew PCBs

On Tue, 30 May 2006 23:10:21 +0200, Volkan Sahin <vsahin@...>  
wrote:

> Yellow is the best magenta is also ok but forget cyan. If your black ink  
> is color black (mixture of yellow, magenta, cyan) it can also be etch  
> resistant but don't expect same performance as yellow one.
> Volkan


Yellow seems much more like a laquer, while black seems more like pigments  
without much resin. Dunno why but that's how it is.

BTW. i left the cheap aftermarket ink in the color carts. When the printer  
starts mixing inks in some settings the blue is added to the black. This  
ink mix is all runny and beads up. The mispro ink seems really a key  
factor. Let's just hope they don't change the formulation, ever, or stop  
selling it.

I just had a look at the C84 printer and removed all the pizza wheels. I  
saw that it should be easy to do whatever one wants to this printer. The  
paper drive stepper is linked to the vacuum cleaner pump by that main  
drive shaft/roller (the one with the rough coating). Nothing else of any  
significance is driven by the paper drive stepper. So the pump could be  
disengaged completely and either replaced with a manual pump or some other  
drive added (worst case just buy another c84 for 1eur and hack the motor  
and gears to duplicate it). This would allow to have the drive stepper  
only used to drive the paper, not in reverse mode for the pump. If one  
wants to have a carriage engaged with the roller at all times it should be  
possible to break connection to the wires of the stepper via transistors,  
so it is only activated when you want to forward the carriage. Or maybe a  
magnetic clutch will be easier to fit, i have some from a copier.
There seems to be only one lever operated optical sensor for the paper  
detection on the back.

ST