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RBMODS REVIEWS |
Date 2003-08-21
Provider: Myself :)
Author: Murdoc
Editor: Princess Ammie
Murdoc Printer mod
The printer that I used was a Kodak Perfect Picture Maker 200 by Lexmark. This is an excellent printer with color LCD display, and it even has a smart media and compact flash card reader. The printer doesn’t look half bad as standard with it’s black plastic and colour LCD display.
When creating the modded printer I had a few ideas in mind; I wanted a custom paint job, but I hadn't decided if I was going to paint the printer all one color or airbrush a design or two. I also wanted to use lighting, with el tape, a UV cc and led's. I toyed with the idea of using led fans and laser cut fan grills but I decided that this would not have much use in the printer.
Painting the printer
The first think I did when modding the printer was to disassemble the printer. I soon realized that the only section of the printer that would require paint was in 2 pieces, a lid, and the outside shell. The only experience I had with painting was my bedroom and watching my dad paint many RC car bodies for my brother. I decided that I would like flames up the side of the printer so I found a mask used on an RC car and purchased a sheet of clear book covering from a local art shop/stationers, actually Dave did, thanks Dave! :) Only cost 99p for more than enough. I used a pencil to trace around the mask and then used a cutting board and scalpel to cut around the pencil line. I discarded the inside section as I needed the outside to protect the areas where I didn’t want paint to land. The airbrush I used was a cheap one and I used red and yellow ‘testers’ paint for the flames. I applied the mask to the printer and covered any other pieces of plastic that I didn’t want to paint. First I applied yellow paint to the whole area of the flames. Then I added red paint into the jar on the airbrush, this would mean the color would very from yellow to red as I spray (ok it didn’t work but I’m lazy), I gave tints of red at the bottom and tips of the flame. You should wait for several hours before removing the mask, I didn’t and this can be seen when looking up close. I needed to give the front of the printer a more interesting look; flames and checker board go well together, I have seen it before on RC cars. Enter Dave again thanks Dave! He helped with the amazingly tedious task of cutting out roughly 40 squares by hand and peeling them so it was easy to stick them to the printer. I only stuck the squares in places where I didn’t want the white paint to land, so the black squares, I also masked off all other areas, this can be done with newspaper.
 
Plz click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures
I recreated the mask from the flames to create the exact same flames on the other side of the printer. This time I wanted blue flames so I used blue and purple flames in the same manner as before to get the effect.
I decided to put a union jack on the printer as I’m British and not patriotic enough. But more importantly it looks good! I found a template of an accurate union jack on google, it’s a weird flag that isn’t symmetrical. I had to cut a template out for each color white, red and blue. I first applied the blue mask to the printer and sprayed a primer then metallic blue, I used primer so the blue would stand out, I used an automotive primer, and white paint would have also worked. I waited a few hours before removing the mask as the paint needed to dry before I stuck the mask over the paint, the next mask I applied was the white mask applied the primer and painted then the red mask. I got gold line from my local garage to outline the union jack. I had one more thing to spray, the red and blackness mods logo :)
 
Plz click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures
Cartridge window
This printer being a photo printer I sometimes have the photo cartridge in so it would be a good idea to be able to see which cartages are in the printer. That’s why I found a piece of fairly think plexi and cut a rectangular hole in the printer, the front of the printer isn’t flat so I had to curve the plexi slightly. This was done by using a lighter or blowtorch on a low flame to melt the plexi and bend it to shape- I used Epoxy to hold the plexi in place.
 
Plz click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures
Motorized Lid
A motorized lid was a thought that came to me after I had been thinking about it for a few days before I decided to see what I could create. I first looked at using a pinion and rack idea, but I decided that this would be very difficult to do and a suitable motor would be hard to come by. I then decided to use a RC car servo because I have several of these around my house. I found a powerful one made by Ko-propro and researched how to use the servo and with doing this I found that a 1ms pulse would make the servo go the start position, a 1.5 ms pulse would make it go to the middle position, and a 2ms pulse would make it go to the end position. To do this I would create an astable circuit, but I decided to get the correct timing would be very difficult as I have no access to a CRO at the moment. I took the servo apart to see if I could just connect directly to the motor. When taking a servo apart, remove the 4 long screws, and only remove the bottom section of the servo, the control PCB can be removed to leave 2 wires connected to the motor. Also their will be a variable resistor in the servo this must be left in and the wires desoldered. I added some fly leads to the motor and used a 5v power supply to check how to connect the wires up to make it go in each direction. (Servos work on 4.8v DC but 5v works fine) I discovered that when wire 1 from the servo was connected to +5v and wire 2 was connected to 0v the servo would turn the one way and when connected oppositely (wire 1 connected to 0v and wire 2 to 5v) the motor would turn the other way. I wanted to use push switches. The easiest way to get the wires to change poles was to use SPDT (Single Pole Double Throw) push switches, and I ordered 2 from Maplin a UK electronics company.
 
Plz click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures
The diagram above shows the wiring arrangement. With a double throw switch when the button is pressed the contacts will be joined like a normally push switch but their will be 2 sets of these, it’s like having 2 push switches in one; this ensures that they make contact at exactly the same time.
A diagram of how the switches will be connected can be seen above.
I had to cut a slot underneath the printer lid to allow the arm connected to the servo to lift the lid, the arm was created from a spare piece of Perspex and the plastic servo arm that comes with the servo. I used a dermal to get the slightly curved shape that was similar to the contours of the printer, then I used 300 grit sand paper to make the edges smooth. I used 2 small screws to secure the Perspex arm to the servo arm, and then secured it with a screw. To cut the slot I measured the length of the arm and proceeded to make a cut with a dremel into the printer. Near the top I had to make the slot wider as it has to accommodate the Perspex and servo arms together. A tip is to make sure the slot is the same width is to use a file, not a needle file but one of a decent size and use it sideways to make a roughly 4mm size slot, the top section needs to be roughly double this width.
 
Plz click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures
You may notice on the picture above that the tip of the Perspex arm is slightly bent; I did this so it would make contact with the printer lid much more securely. To bend it I simply heated where the bend would be with a lighter and held it in position. This meant I had to cut a little extra away from the printer. To test it all fitted I used strong double sided tape to secure the servo roughly in the correct position, connected it all up and tested. It worked first time! I needed to make the hole slightly larger but I did that using the file trick above.
I then used servo tape and super glue to stick the servo in place permanently, ‘servo tape’ is a sort of padded material with a strong adhesive on both sides. I cut a piece roughly the size of the servo applied a small amount of super glue to the servo and placed the servo tape on top. The reason for using the servo tape is that the surface I was sticking the servo to isn’t entirely flat so servo tape will give better contact and the super glue is to improve on the current adhesive on the tape. I then put glue on the other side of the servo tape and stuck the servo to the printer; I used a g-clamp to hold it securely as the glue set. At this time my switches hadn’t arrived yet but I knew that the switches would require a 14mm hole to sit in I used a Reamer to make the hole the correct size but a drill can be used just as easy. When the switches came I just pushed them into the holes and soldered up the wires.
More pics >>>>> Page 2
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