Using an old dot-matrix printer as a plotter?

[h-g-t]

I was looking through the service manual for the Epson FX 1050 dot-matrix printer the other day to see what could be salvaged.

The diagrams for the paper feed and carriage stepper motors were provided and it seemed to me that it might be possible to disconnect the cpu and rewire the driver circuits to an I2C chip. By attaching a pen in place of the printhead it might be possible to convert this to a cheap flat-bed plotter.

Has anyone else looked into this before and found any good reason why it should not work?

Epson.zip

Carriage and paper feed drive circuits in pdf format.

(23.34 KiB) Downloaded 263 times

[mattallen37]

If I were to try to do it, I would use a U-controller dedicated to driving the motor, and have an I2C interface to the NXT for commands. With a U-controller, I wouldn't have to send a separate I2C command for each position change. It appears that it uses stepper motors, so I would probably use a quad half H-bridge for the motor power controllers.