--- In
Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "Alan J. Franzman"
<a.j.franzman@v...> wrote:
> --- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <alienrelics@y...>
> wrote:
> > I just got an Epson 600 from a thrift store a few days ago, got it
> > cleaned up and printing perfectly. Next step is to modify it for
> > straight through printing.
>
> Re: straight-through printing,
>
> I was in Best Buy the other day and saw some DVD-Rs that said
> something on the package about having a specially prepared surface
> that could be directly printed by inkjet. This was news to me, so I
> went over to the printer section and sure enough, the Epson Stylus
> Photo R300 (and more expensive R300M) can print directly on a disc!
> A Google search reveals several other machines that can do this too;
> many are specialized devices that ∗only∗ print on discs, while
> others are general-purpose printers too. Most of them seem to use a
> special tray to align the discs to the printhead. Here's one that
> prints up to 6 discs at a time on a tray that feeds ∗through∗ the
> printer from back to front:
> http://www.datadev.com/rim13c.html
>
> Too bad it's so expensive! I think in the next couple of years,
> something like this will start to become available used at low cost.
> It looks like the tray could easily be adapted for circuit boards,
> no cutting up or modifying the printer case and drive mechanism to
> handle boards. You could probably buy a replacement tray from the
> manufacturer and keep the disc-printing ability by swapping trays.
> It may be necessary to fiddle with hardware to make a combo paper/
> disc printer feed its disc tray even when you tell it you're
> printing paper, so you can get full coverage of your board rather
> than just 5 inch circles (I'm sure the built in software is designed
> not to allow printing on the tray itself), but this shouldn't be too
> hard...
I wish -I- had thought to package an Epson with a CD tray, call it a
different name, and sell it for 3x the price... ;') That sure looks
like an Epson.
Someone else is selling Epson 1520's with a 6 CD tray. They may or may
not have had to modify the 1520, don't know. Someone on a DVD forum
modified a Lexmark to print on CDs.
I have brought this up in the past: how about one of those wax CD
printers? Wax is definitely waterproof. The question would be, does
the printed wax 100% cover? Thermal wax CD printers don't require
special coatings. As you say, different printing software and modify
the tray to take square PCBs. Or the novelty of CD shaped PCBs.
There are a few very cheap single color thermal wax CD printers, just
over $100 USD.
Steve