Dot Matrix sand Printer?

Using Arduino Project Guidance
1

Like this

but with servo or solenoid driven pegs to draw in the beach sand.

Anyone built anything like a large dot matrix print head here?

2

Have you tried riding a bicycle/tricycle on sand? :cold_sweat:

3

How about this ATV?

4

Ok, I can see this the sandprinter idea is a non-starter :smiley:

Maybe a smaller version printer-bot with sharpie pens?

Need something cheap (or free/scrap part) for the pen up/down mech though.

5

dot matrix printer need ink ribbon, for me this design not much to do with dot matrix printer.
It is should be in Ink Jet direct printing.

some examples;-

Large Character Ink Jet Printer printing on Concrete Blocks

Commercial Solutions

back to your design, if I were you, I will go for Sand jet direct printing, since water on sand do not stay. by use diff color sand, the pic will be semi-stay, and environment green.

6

The really impressive bit would be to work out where the 'print head' is accurately enough that you could overlay multiple passes onto the same picture, without requiring the print head to make perfectly aligned passes over the print area. That's something that you could implement with a single print jet on paper, if you wanted something more convenient than a parking lot. Wouldn't it be cool to have a pen that you could just scribble over a piece of paper and have it draw a picture?

7

Baby steps... :slight_smile:

As a start, I was thinking a single line of text, like the old turtle robots but with 8 pens to act like a dot matrix printer.

8

How large do you want your text to be?
The size of the pens and the tips will determine how far apart the tips and, therefore, the dots are.
Ordinary ball point pens are 8 or 9mm in diameter and draw a line about 0.5mm wide. A 'dot' is smaller. With them, your output would look something like this:-

..... ....... .. .. . . .......

. . . . . . .. . .

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .. .

..... . .. .. . . .

look too good, does it?

9

I was thinking about using marker (sharpie type pens), but if using ballpoint pens invert the text, so that a line is drawn for white space.

....._____......._____
     
__.__________.________

__.__________.________

__.__________.________

__.__________.________

__.__________.________

__.__________.________

.....________.________
10

You can get the print positions as close together as you want by offsetting the print heads/pens.

11

I wonder if Disney reads this forum... :smiley:

12