retrointerfacing

A very interesting post on retro thing : The optical audio-tapes on the pallophotophone, how would they work? Perhaps a system reminiscent of the optigan organ? I tried to make a similar system once, using a printed disc on a disk-drive motor. Unfortunately my pickup (a photodiode) only picked up 50Hz noise.. (okay, I was 12)… It took me some years to realize that I was listening to my desk lamp instead of the optical disk.. oh well…

It is fun to see how deprivation of material can spark creativity! By setting the boundaries for this project to use ONLY the parts of printers and computer junk, you can - will come up with solutions you otherwise wouldn’t have thought of!

After last week’s enthusiastic post, reality kicked in hard when trying to control the steppermotors. Bottom line: they were by far not strong enough to power the metal carriage (normally they only have to move a plastic printer head) Besides lack of strength, they also lacked resolution. With one step (motor 7.2 degrees) more than one milimeter is covered! This makes it hard to get enough precision for printing parts.

One other problem is synchrony between the two side-axes. The slightest difference between the two motors causes the system to jam. The only way to prevent this is to mechanically link both motors.

It came as a surprise that it is possible to do all this using only the remaining parts of the matrix printers. The gears that were previously used for driving the paper roll have been used for a reduction in the drive train. Superfluous gears normally used for spinning the ink-lint have been used as bearings.

The last two pictures show two optical detectors as end-stops for initialization purposes.

Between the two halve shafts that couple the motions from both Y axes, a temporary meccano solution has been made as flexible shaft coupling. Eventually something will have to be distilled from the printer parts, or I will cheat with an ordered flex coupling.

Freaky ideas, novel and weird technology.. I do like to live in today’s world, somehow I believe it is getting more and more fun, at least for me… and I hope I can share some of it. Hmm.. that sounds a bit mushy, doesn’t it? The big existential question when starting a blog is always something along the lines of ‘Who am I to think that what I write is interesting, who cares anyway’. Just to be on the safe side, I’ll just start writing things mainly for myself, just so I can remember things, point other people towards it.. If you want to tag along, you’re welcome!