SansInkorporated

 

Sans Inkorporated

A pencil printer that allows users to cheaply and efficiently print basic documents from home by using pencil lead instead of expensive and finicky printer ink cartridges.

Improve your life with Sans Inkorporated.

Motivation

The existing printer market for home applications is saturated with examples of dirt cheap inkjet printer hardware, and incredibly expensive ink cartridges. Home users who spring for inkjet style printers are typically looking for inexpensive and simple solutions for basic printing applications.

Innovation

The pencil printer uses pencil lead - a medium commonly found at home, to substitute expensive and proprietary printer ink to allow for easy and cheap home printing. We provide a simple and environmentally friendly solution to your everyday printing needs.

Design and Development

Using a microcontroller and high-precision motors which are driven by our custom printing software, we will guide a pencil across the paper, delivering clean, editable, and readable documents.

Competetive Analysis

Print Vector ImagesPrint Text/ Rasterized ImagesLow Cost/ MaintenanceEnvironmentally FriendlyManually Fix Errors
Inkjet Printers
Pen Plotters
Sans Ink. Pencil Printer

Media

Image Gallery

Videos

Back to Top

Design.

Functional Requirements

  • Must be able accept print instructions from a computer
  • Must be able to print vectorized images
  • Must be able to print text
  • Must be able to print color
  • Must be able to fill (hatch/cross-hatch)

Perforance Requirements

  • Must be able to cover a majority of a standard 8.5" by 11", (minus margins)
  • Must generate lines of consistent thickness and sharpness
  • Printing time per page should not exceed that of a typical inkjet printer
Back to Top

Technical Specifications.

Design

The printer will consist of a motorized writing-tip mounted on an XY track to effectively cover an 8.5" by 11" sheet of paper with text or vectorized images.

Hardware

  • 3 Linear Guide Systems
  • 2 High Precision Stepper Motors
  • 2 Idler pulleys
  • 2 Timing Belts
  • 6 Pillow Blocks
  • 6 Shaft Collars
  • Servo
  • Shaft
  • Arduino Uno
  • A Pencil

Software and Protocol

We will be making our own custom software for communicating with the printer. It will take in a vector picture or text file and tell the arduino how to print it. We will also automatically vectorize non-vector images and print them. Communication with the printer will occur through a serial protocol.

Back to Top

About us.

As a group of Electrical and Computer Engineering students, we look forward to exploring the challenges involved with this project, both mechanical and software related. We envision a world where we can print environmentally friendly, editable documents from the comfort of our homes.

Our Team

Back to Top