Re: Poor Mans DRO

I have used these before in robotics projects and they function
pretty well. The downside to them is that they tend to wear out
fairly quickly and you have to figure out specs on your own in most
cases (not all manufaturers use the same setup). Of course, they are
cheaper than dirt, and all the HP printers I have seen use the same
(or at least functionally same) encoder strip. W/ a properly
designed support circuit, you can run this setup without a rotary
encoder (you will note there is no rotary encoder in the printer).


--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, "eewizard_1"
<eewizard_1@y...> wrote:

>
> After reading about the mouse guts DRO maybe some would be
> interested in a low budget linear encoder.
>
> The head burned out on an inkjet printer I had so I took it
> appart to get the little motors. It had a nice 12" linear scale

with

> an HP quadrature detector for print head positioning. Some of the
> printers go up to 2400DIP so don't just dump the old printers.
> They're a gold mine of neat small parts (and full of ink from head
> cleaning).
>
> Al