Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Powder and inkjet printing
johndavis726
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2022 11:24 pm

Re: Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Post by johndavis726 »

Oliver3D wrote: Sun Jun 27, 2021 8:48 am Hello,
I'd like to design a Xaar 128 control board over the summer and sell a few pieces. I'd love to hear from you, what are you looking for in terms of specs? I only have experience in designing FFF and SLA machines, so this is something new to me. So far, I've came up with the following specs:
  • price lower than 200 USD
  • 32-bit CPU
  • Ethernet interface
  • MicroSD
  • 3x stepper motor drivers
  • 12 V input
  • 1x Xaar 128 head output
  • 4x Endstops input
  • 2x UV lamp power output (with changeable output voltage and current control)
  • 2x thermistor inputs
  • 2x fans output
What do you think? Is there anything else, you'd like to see on the board?
Thanks for feedback.

Best,
Adam
Hey Adam,

Did you end up designing and testing a board to work with the Xaar 128?
johndavis726
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2022 11:24 pm

Re: Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Post by johndavis726 »

Would anyone be interested in selling their xaar 128 printhead or entire xarr 128 setup? I'd like to mess around with this printhead for a 3d printing application.
weixiongmei
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jul 08, 2022 4:02 pm

Re: Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Post by weixiongmei »

johndavis726 wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 4:24 am Would anyone be interested in selling their xaar 128 printhead or entire xarr 128 setup? I'd like to mess around with this printhead for a 3d printing application.
I'm not selling anything, I'm messing with the printhead with different fluids, and screwed two printheads already, it can prints UV inks, and UV resins, but it needs dedicated waveforms for that, the out off box waveforms which pre-loaded in the printhead is not suitable for the job. If you would like to mess with it, you may have to have the mental preparation that you may going to loose couple hundred dollars, or maybe a thousand or two. I still have 4 heads on hand to mess with. If you're going to mess with the head, make sure you use the approved ink and flush, otherwise you can't recover it, I lost my first one because didn't used the proper filter, lost the second one with a not compatible flush.
Last edited by weixiongmei on Fri Jul 08, 2022 4:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.
brenda
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2022 1:41 pm

Re: Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Post by brenda »

Hi everyone,

first of all, I want to thank everyone in this thread for providing such a complete guide on how to use the Xaar 128 printhead.
I was really easy to get it running with all the info from you guys.

But, I might have a little issue with mine. I got it to fire all nozzles on the first try, and throughout all the development of my little machine it worked really great, only with occasional ink purge/wipe because I didn't have the required negative pressure ink supply system, but lately, the middle-most nozzles kind of started to slack off. At first only a few of them, but now almost all the nozzles but the outermost ones won't fire.

If I force pure water through the head, all the nozzles make their own distinct stream, so they are not clogged, and I've tried two different inks, Epson T7741 and Brother BT-D60BK. Both are probably not for piezo-printheads, but I didn't think it matters, since it printed fine at the beginning.

I've attached a picture of what the actual swath looks like now. It's supposed to be a full line, but only a few nozzles at each end actually fire something, and they are also slowly dying.

Does anyone have an idea on what's happening to my precious nozzles? Did I... did I kill them?
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Wonko
Posts: 110
Joined: Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:13 pm

Re: Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Post by Wonko »

Water will short out the pizzas and kill them. Once you run the head with water, you can basically throw it away. You should only use Xaar sanctioned ink and cleaning fluid, and purge the cleaning fluid using a negative pressure on the nozzle size and pull fresh ink in before running the head again.

Xaar heads are for professional large format printers and are extremely reliable when used within specs, but also extremely sensitive otherwise. Very different than a consumer print head.

One user here announced compatible ink for 3D printing (UV Ink), but I have not followed up on that project.
vncntlvr
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2022 5:38 pm

Re: Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Post by vncntlvr »

Hi guys!

I saw this Youtube video showing a DIY (?) Xaar 128 application. Of all the demonstrations I've seen so far I've been most impressed with the print quality achieved there.

Since the video was also posted here by davidk, I thought I'd ask you guys what you think is the single most important factor in achieving this level of print quality? The printhead controller hardware/software? The ink, damper and general ink supply system? The motion control system? The head cleaning fluid and cleaning system? Something else?

Are the open source printhead controller software projects (like gkyle's or MatthiasWM/Wondo's) sufficient or is there a lot of tweaks required to get to a good print quality? Would printhead control benefit from offloading some stuff to a FPGA since all commercial printhead control boards seem to include one? If so, what? Is there some Verilog or VHDL code lying around? Finally, and I might be asking too much here, but has anyone managed to incorporate an IPP-compatible HTTP interface into their firmware?

Thanks!
Last edited by vncntlvr on Thu Sep 01, 2022 7:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
kulhom
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2022 9:02 am

Re: Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Post by kulhom »

Hey guys.

i just found that thread by chance.

i've been working with inkjet printers for 15 years and right now i'm working in a inkjet ink R&D department.

if you need any kind of support about fluids, maybe some technical documentations... just ask and i'll do my best

greetings and good job
rofl
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Aug 26, 2019 9:13 pm

Re: Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Post by rofl »

Hi, kulhom.

I have been recently trying to come up with my one ink/binder formulas for printing. I am more fascinated with inks rather than powders, because those are more or less commodity and not that much can be done there to improve things. But I really find it difficult to make something reasonable with inks as its quite difficult to understand the causes why one ink works and why the other one does not.

I initially tried standard things like IPA with water, some dyes and those spray well out of nozzles, but my goal is to improve raw/green strength of parts as gypsum or other particles are really really fragile after printing and usually it is really hard to even hold them in hands without breaking. Thus
thought I will make my own latex based binder for metal powder (or any other powders as well) [metal is my primary goal for this hobby]. I tried to get some BASF dispersions for inkjet inks like Joncryl DPS 3791, Joncryl DPS 3771 etc., but when I make recommended formulas with water, propylene glycol my HP45 thermal head (the head I use) does not spray any ink at all... sometimes it makes one initial spray and then simply it looks like it clogs... I suppose it could be viscosity, it could be surface tension etc., but I really do not know what kind of workflow should I follow... Perhaps you have some documentation, some technical documents on making these things? Perhaps some readings? Anything would be helpful.. Or perhaps you have some more tangible suggestions how to make these things like better material/components selection.

Thanks!
Angefrank
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2022 3:14 am

Re: Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Post by Angefrank »

Hi Wonko,

It's possible for you to post the electric diagram of the setup? I'm interesting to try the xaar128.

thank you
least_force
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2022 1:57 pm

Re: Hacking the Xaar 128 printhead

Post by least_force »

Just pure IPA should work in the head as it should not be conductive and not block it. It likely has a viscosity much lower than ideal so would print poorly.

Similarly cleaning with water would be fine as long as it is removed prior to powering the head. Also deionised water shouldn’t be an issue as it won’t be conductive.
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