Noob looking for help with printer cnc

Question

First, Hi, Long time youtube watcher of Ben Heck, first time poster.

Second, A small backstory. I work at a store, lets call it the pointing skyward store, to protect the customer. I have a costumer that has several Epson r2000 shipped to her weekly (See link.) We thought she was selling them in her store, but it turns out she was taking the print heads out and selling them. She then threw away the whole printer. When he asked if she could use our dumpster,we assumed she was just throwing the boxes away, but she meant the whole printer. With her permission, I now have 8 printers in perfect working order with more if I need.

Now the question. Having no experience with any major DIY tech project, how do I make a CNC out of my unlimited supply of motors, gears, and IR sensors.

I think I would rather keep the mainbord together. I'm not against having two or three of the printers mainbords in one CNC

A little more about me;

I am an accomplished handy man with experience in plumbing, carpentry, and electrical work.
I have a scope (Don't know how to use it) a DVOM (Barely know how to use it) A soldering iron (not the best, but I trust myself with small jobs) a good dremel, and a crap jigsaw.

My budget is a piece stale gum I found in my pocket.

Any links, reading material, references, or pleads to go to college are accepted.

Thanks!

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Product.do?sku=C11CB35201&ref=van_r2000_2011-05-001

colecago · Accepted Answer

Honestly, it's not worth re-using the motors for a 3D printer or CNC. They are usually low quality DC motors with optical sensors for position and speed feedback. It would be more trouble than its worth than just paying like $30-50 for proper steppers and getting a well established driver system like arduino with ramps, the printrboard, teenslyu, or the tinyg (for CNC). Those are well accepted platforms and have a wealth of examples to go by, so unless you want to do it the hard way, it's probably not worth it to use the motors and drive system from the inkjet printer.

DAB · Answer

Hi Zach,

I have been picking up old printers at a garage sale.

I agree that they are not that useful for a CNC, but I have found that you can use the carrige drive to make a excellent adjustable focus tool for microphotography and for making 3D captures of small objects.

The DC motors are quite useful with PWM drivers and most of the printers come with a variely of angle and position feedback sensors.

Don't forget to save all of these ancillary parts like gears and wheels, belts, rollers, etc. All of these can be used in a wide variety of robot and automation projects.

Sounds like your dumpster is a gold mine for useful components.

Open your mind, there is a lot of neat projects you could do.

DAB

Oh, and I almost forgot. Take a look at the paper based 3D printer products. I have been looking at using a series of old printers to make each layer, cut the outlines, glue the levels together and then roll them flat.

You might take a look at that method of making CNC molds.

Just a thought.