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By Gadfly
#108818
I am starting up a pet project and was hoping for some feedback and advice before I get started in earnest.

Goal is to create a liquid handling robot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_handling_robot) from old printer parts. I have Canon S820 that I have disassembled and it seems to have the motors and hardware I need. The robot will always be connected to a PC that will do high level control and synchronization of motors to perform sequences of actions.

I want to base the setup on a Arduino board as it gives me a lot of I/O options. Question is whether is should get some motor drivers or can I connect to controllers on the printer board and use them? Can I simply attach to the serial pins on the printer board (A3958SLB and TB62201AF) from the Arduino and start sending data while printer is powered? And what worries me the most - what kind of soldering skills would that require ;)

Any thoughts and ideas ?
By TomasReabe
#109123
You can pull parts out of the printer but the printer is not set up to be given go to comands to move your gantry.

Look into DIY CNC systems, Sparkfun has stepper motor controlers or I got mine from EasyCNC and it connects to the printer port of the pc to get the comands to move the gantry. you could then send the data to the arduino to run the vac/plunger system to move the liquid. but there will be soldering (should be able to do this without much problems) and programing to cordinate the motors.