[tokanka123]

Hi,

About a year ago, my brother and I engaged on a quixotic project to build from scratch a low-cost PCB direct printer for photoresist.

Finally we did it using a Blue Ray™ optical pickup (PHR-803T) and his UV laser/electronics to sensitize Dry-film.

The optical pickup is used through his own connector without any modification. We deduced the pinout using reverse engineering and designed a driver for an Arduino UNO to control it. Basically, we can adjust the laser power, turn the laser on/off, move the focus lens servo and read the photodiode array signal.

The control of the pickup allowed us implementing a laser auto-focus algorithm based on the astigmatic method. Is the same method use it to focus the laser beam on the Blue Ray™ disc.

The mechanics is an X/Y Cartesian table which moves the pickup with two Nema 16 stepper motors and T2.5 timing-belts. Most of the printer framework has been printed with a 3D Reprap printer, so it’s replicable.

We also developed the Arduino UNO firmware, based on 3D printer firmware Marlin, and the server side software which send the HPGL commands to the printer. Eagle Cadsoft complete the “tool-chain”. It supports HPGL in his CAM processor, so is easy to design the circuit with Eagle, generate the HPGL file and send it to the printer.

DiyouPCB is a prototype and it's still not perfect: we have some resonance and vibration issues that affect the quality of printing, but it's a first step to have an alternative method to indirect methods as the famous toner transfer.

We shared all the information about how to build it and use it in our site: Diyouware.com | DIYouware . It's an open-source project so you can download all the blueprints, schematics, software, etc. free.

Attachment 221872

[cwiliam]

great machine
Thank you for sharing

[lapoltba]

Very nice. I was thinking about trying something like this but I don't have the skills to do the software side of things. Is there a reason you chose not to raster?