Help with printer and printing

I’m trying to find a way to just print one line at a time with an ink jet printer with the printer then pausing and waiting for the next data stream. Without the printer trying to unload the paper that I have loaded.

Like the way with the old dot matrix where you could send one line or even one character at a time and your own carriage return and end of page command.

I’m assuming I’ll have to do this in code but not sure where to look into it. All I get with google is just page after page of help with problems with printer problems.

Also I would prefer to do this on my Pi but if anyone only knows how to do this with windows let me know at least that would give me a starting point

Thanks

Here’s a similar question thread:

The link within that answer is dead, but here it is archived:

I suspect that even if you solve this in the printer driver and print job manager, you may still fall up against limitations in the ink jet printer itself.

Good luck, and please post back with your results.

replace the feed motor with your own stepper control? ugly but might work.

Thanks Luke Form Feed that’s the proper term I’m looking for. I need to turn that off so should help my googling and those links give me some ideas to try.

Yeah there are some limitations of inkjet tech but I’ve done my crash course over the last year so I can deal with most of them. But testing is the only way to see the results. The ZCorp printer is whats using the inkjet so what I need to figure out how to replicate.

No Dan replacing motors is not an option at this point. I’m using the controller board that comes with the printer and there’s no way to change any of the hardware and still keep that board running.

Hi Dan,
(1) There is a great book “Mathematical Illustrations: A Manual of Geometry and PostScript”
that gets into the nitty gritty of PostScript (Mathematical Illustrations)

(2) Can the “waiting for the next line” be performed by a computer (and accumulate the line in the computer buffer) instead of the printer?

(3) Install OS OpenBSD (Linux/Unix) as they insist on Source Code of Printer Drivers from Printer manufacturers (no proprietary drivers allowed), may be you can “modify” the driver code from that OS?

Best Regards,
RK

  1. Thanks. I won’t need this atm but at some point once I have the other mechanics working for sure I will.

  2. nope, has to be output line by line. Reason is that the hardware that I have is hacked together won’t work at the speeds that it was intended.

  3. I look into this cause that’s going to help a lot to see the source code. I’ll have to find out if openBSD works on a Pi as that’s what I’m hoping to use.

Hi Dan,
Welcome & Good luck!
RK

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