Chapter 11. Printer
In the first part of this section we made a simple plotter, where we could draw lines by moving a pen anywhere in two dimensions. However, the printers you use every day don’t do this. They scan a print head down the page. Much as we did with the camera, they move from side to side and then down the page, covering the area but only applying ink where needed.
Making your own printer can be quite easy. Here, we’re going to use a screw thread to let us print on some paper with just a motor, position sensor, and one actuator to move the pen up or down.
Because we’ve used servo motors for previous projects, we’ll use them here. However, you could use any geared motor, and even a solenoid to control whether the pen touches the ...
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