How to Control an Inkjet Cartridge with Pulse Signals?

[hananl]

I would be very happy if there is anyone that knows a way to control the inkjet cartige with pulse signals instead of the computer.
I want to be able to "shoot" ink droplets from all the nozzles at the same time. I need to know how to operate each of the pizo crystals, and then to operate them all.
Anyone?
Thanks,
Hanan.

 

[mezarashi]

Are you planning to somehow dismantle the catridge without destroying it? If you plan to say... take the catridge out of the printer and connect your own circuit to the input circuitry, I think it would turn out quite impossiblish. The signals are encoded and unique to the company that made it. You would have to know what signal to feed it to make it do something.

Or on the other hand, you may be planning to drive the printer from a non-Word program?

 

[berkeman]

I would be very happy if there is anyone that knows a way to control the inkjet cartige with pulse signals instead of the computer.
I want to be able to "shoot" ink droplets from all the nozzles at the same time. I need to know how to operate each of the pizo crystals, and then to operate them all.
Anyone?
Thanks,
Hanan.

Reverse engineering something like a ThinkJet cartridge can be difficult, especially when a big company like HP has put so much R&D into getting the technology to work well. You can try monitoring the drive signals with your oscilloscope while the printer runs, but that will be pretty hard to instrument. I did a google search on the following and got some good hits, including the one after the search text:

+inkjet +drive +circuit

http://powerelectronics.com/mag/power_power_amplifier_drives/

Another approach that you might try would be to do a patent search on inkjet technology. HP and Xerox and whoever else is big on the research will typically patent some of the technology, and keep other parts proprietary. But the Patent literature may give you enough to do simple stuff with the cartridges (certainly not photo quality, though).

 

[Ouabache]

I believe hananl's application is to adapt a printer cartridge as an injector of microscopic organisms in suspension. See hananl's related post