11/12/2019 HP45 Inkjet Printhead – Ytec 3D

3D printers and 3D printing

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HP45 Inkjet Printhead

The HP45 printhead

The HP45 printhead is an inkjet printer cartridge designed by Hewlett-Packard. It is found in inkjet printers and
plotters from the early 2000’s. The design consists of a large reservoir to hold ink, a set of contacts on the back and
2 rows of nozzles on the bottom. The ink reservoir holds 42ml of ink is held under slight vacuum using a spring.
Even for today’s standards, the HP45 boasts a respectable set of features. It has 300 nozzles spaced at 600 dots
per Inch (DPI). The whole printhead operates on 12V and 52 contacts on the back are used to control the
printhead.

The HP 45 printhead can be used to print with ink on a varied amount of surfaces. This can be to mark object, or
make a custom inkjet printer. It can be controlled with fast microcontrollers that have a lot of pins (such as the
Arduino Mega or DUE). The printhead can be emptied and refilled with any volatile fluid that doesn’t react much.
The heater has to be able to vaporize a droplet. This means that the printhead can print with liquids like alcohol and
water. More aggressive solvents like white spirits and acetone might be possible, but this needs to be tested first.

On this page I hope to share all I know about the HP45 printhead so it may benefit others. All I know is through
tests, experiments and through information acquired from people and documentation. Expect the information on
this page to change as more experiments refine values and more properties of the printhead are found.

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A special thanks to:

A lot of information was taken from a patent that applies to the HP45: http://www.google.com/patents/US5946012. I
thank HP for providing such a rich source of information.

Also a special thanks to Aad van der Geest @ Spitstec: http://www.spitstec.nl/. I do not think I could have hacked
this printhead without your wisdom. (seriously click the link)

More information on the precise hacking process can be found here: http://ytec3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?
f=8&t=28. On the Ytec3D Forum.

How the HP45 works

The HP45 is what is called a bubblejet or thermal drop on demand printhead. Each nozzle on the printhead has a
chamber with a tiny heater attached to it. When the nozzle needs to eject a droplet of ink, the heater is briefly
powered, flash vaporizing a small bit of ink in the chamber. This vapor pushes out the rest of the ink in the chamber.
After a droplet is ejected, the heater cools down and the chamber fills with ink again. To give an idea of how fast
this process can happen. In the HP45 it takes just 2 microseconds to eject a droplet.

Nozzle

As mentioned, each nozzle consists of a chamber with ink and a tiny heater. On the bottom of this chamber is a hole
of roughly 28 microns through which the ink is expelled. The heater is a tiny resistor with a resistance of around
30Ω. Also on each nozzle is a Field Effect Transistor (FET). This is something to do with the manufacturing process
and is used to multiplex the array of nozzles. Each address on the nozzle requires 12V to open the gate. The
primitive requires 12V, though it is said that the voltage becomes lower as the printhead starts to warm up.

The nozzles are connected in a multiplexed array. This way 300 nozzles can be controlled with only 36 controlling
pins. 14 of these pins are primitives, connected straight to the heating resistors. The primitives will run the actual
current that will eject the ink. The other 22 are addresses and are connected to the gates of the FET’s. The
addresses only need to open the gate and can so don’t need much current to activate. The grounds are drawn as
separate lines, but in the printhead they are all connected through each other. Other components like the
temperature sensor are also grounded through the ground pins.

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A full schematic of the complete set of nozzles in the printhead

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A schematic of a single nozzle heater circuit

Nozzle locations

On the bottom of the printhead are 300 nozzles. At 600 DPI, the 300 nozzles cover half an inch or about 12,7mm.
The nozzles are divided in 2 rows of 150 nozzles each, 4mm apart and the full 12,7mm long. Each row has a
resolution of 300 nozzles per inch. The 2 rows are staggered 1/600th of an inch so the 2 rows combined give the
full 600DPI. Each row of nozzles is not perfectly straight, but actually sways a bit from left to right. There is no
specific pattern to this, so the exact table with each exact nozzle location (according to the patent) if found in the
downloads below.

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A closeup of the printing side of the HP45

Schematic overview of how the nozzles are spaced and located under the printhead.
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Nozzle Timing
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To get droplets of ink out of the nozzles, a combination of pins need to be pulsed in order. First the address needs to
be supplied with 12V. This opens the gate of the FET, and makes it so that the current can flow from primitive to
ground. The time between the address opening and the primitive being powered and is around 2us (Tp-a). All the
primitives that are on an address that need to be triggered open next. The voltage Vprim can vary depending on a
few factors, but is usually between 9V and 12V. A primitive needs to be open for 2us (Tprim). After that, the primitive
is closed. 3us (Tp-a) later the address is closed too. After this, the next address is opened and the process of
triggering a nozzle is repeated. After the nozzles on the 22nd address have been triggered triggered, the 1st
address opens again. This cascade repeats until the printhead is done.

A few warnings. If the address is closed before the primitive, the FET will be damaged or destroyed. The primitive
should always be closed before the address. Triggering a primitive for more than 2us may damage the nozzle. If the
nozzles are triggered while there is no ink, the nozzle can be damaged.

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Address timing diagram. The addresses cascade from 1-22 and then return to 1.

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Nozzle timing diagram

Contacts

The contacts on the back connect to all of the nozzles and some additional electronics. In total there are 52
contacts. Like with the nozzles themselves, the contacts are split into 2 groups. The left side is odd, the right side is
even. Important here is that both odd and even addresses go to both rows of nozzles, but primitives only go to their
own side. This means that all odd primitives are only connected to the odd nozzles, and all even primitives are only
connected to even nozzles. Technically speaking the same goes for the grounds, but they are all connected, so it
maters less.

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The 52 contacts on the back of an HP45

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The actual pin mapping on the HP45 printhead

Thermal sense and 10x resistor

The thermal sense resistor and 10x resistor are 2 additional resistors in the printhead to get better information
during printing. Not much is disclosed about their exact properties, so this is where the information gets a bit more
vague, but this is what I know so far. The 10x resistor is installed as a reference. It has a resistance of around
300Ω. It is 10x as high a resistance as the printhead heater resistors. It can be used to measure the resistance from
the controller all the way to the printhead, so all other systems can be adjusted accordingly. The 10x resistors
resistance remains stable as the printhead temperature rises.

The thermal sense resistor is a temperature sensor. It has a resistance in the neighborhood of 300Ω, but the
resistance goes up as the temperature rises. Values were measured on 2 printheads using how water and a
multimeter. The resistance for each temperature seems to be dependent on the resistance of the 10x resistor. If the
10x has a higher resistance, the temperature sensor also has a higher resistance. Because of this, the table for
what temperature is what value will be given in (temperature sense resistor) – (10X resistor). At 20°C this value is
around 10Ω and rises with 11Ω every 10°C. At 80°C the resistance will be around 76Ω.

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A table with the relation between temperature and the resistance of the 10x and
thermal sense resistor for the HP45

Projects with the HP45

The HP45 breakout board with carrier can be used to interface with the Hp45 printhead. It is designed to give a 1
to 1 connection with every single of the 52 contacts on the HP45. Two 26 wire ribbon cables with cable headers can
be used to connect the breakout to any circuit. The carrier has a latch mechanism so the HP45 can easily be
swapped.

downloads
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There are a bunch of files I have made so far for the HP45. This includes an accurate CAD models of the HP45,
drawings with dimensions of the contacts and an Excel file with all nozzle information.

If you downloaded the files from this site and liked it, please consider going to the Donations page. This will help the
development of more free designs and plans.

License

The project described on this page is licensed under the Creative commons - Attribution - ShareAlike license.

21 Comments

Felix
August 25, 2019 at 6:18 pm Reply

Hey thanks for the great work. As the printhead is rather old I could not find it on a first research online. Any
ideas where to get it? Which printers used it? Any printhead which are similar?

Thank you so much

dragonator
September 1, 2019 at 11:10 am Reply

I have no issue finding the HP45 printhead on the internet. I have several Dutch webshops selling
them. As for comparable printheads, there are a few, but I would have to look them up. I can
currently only control the HP45 myself.

li
July 23, 2019 at 8:33 am Reply

I need TIJ 2.5 Print Cartridge TDS document

Sergey
March 11, 2019 at 5:25 pm Reply

Hi guys!

Have any one know why this model of cartridge was choose?
I would like to make the same printer and would like to understand why was choose this model of cartridge. As
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for me it’s old cartridge and maybe have sense use something newer. If any one or author has any info about
that please share with us I guess this info will be interesting for many people.

dragonator
March 14, 2019 at 6:48 pm Reply

It is a fairly easy to figure out printhead. Everything is wired directly to the nozzles. Newer heads
have more and more electronics in them until a point where the signal can even be encrypted.
HP45 had a lot of resources while I was hacking. There are newer heads though, and I do plan
on looking further.

Ruel
September 4, 2018 at 1:34 pm Reply

Hello. I have read before but could not find it anymore that you can use HP45 instead of HP15 for your printer.
The instruction was to put a 9V battery on two pinouts and the printer will accept HP45. Do you have any idea
which pins are these? Thanks in advance.

Junaid

March 29, 2018 at 6:56 pm Reply

Hi, I don’t know if you’re still looking at this, but I can’t get a 0.4 A from the source I intent to use with the
printhead, and the other option I have is a 12V 30A source which is plain overkill. Would 0.1A work, and if it did,
would I have to leave the address on for longer as to allow the resistor in the primitive to heat up? It would take
a little longer, and I’m not quite sure if it would damage the nozzles, as the temperature would still eventually
become the same, it’s just that it may take a little longer.
Any help would be great, Thanks!

Junaid

March 29, 2018 at 10:29 pm Reply

Let me rephrase this because I myself don’t understand what I’ve just said. Would a current less
than 0.4A achieve the same goal of heating up the resistor inside the primitive enough to the
point it reaches the same temperature as if a 0.4A source were to be used? If the smaller current
source did accomplish heating up the resistor, would extending the duration which the current
passes through both pins damage the nozzle, or would it just not work effectively? Hope that’s a
little clearer

Angel5a
April 7, 2018 at 12:15 am Reply

You need 0.4А peak per 1 heater. But you have 14 primitives. To run them all you’ll
need 5.6A of peak current.
This peak current can be provided by the capacitors, because in average you’ll
need much lower. Remember, 2us before, 2us on, and 3ms after? So in average
you’ll need power source with 0.4*2/7 = 0.12A for one by one, or 1.6A for all 14 at
once. If you’ll add extra delay, any power adapter with appropriate capacitor bank
will suite.
You don’t need to extend heating duration, you just need to add ceramic capacitor
and extend timeout.

Matt

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February 24, 2018 at 11:03 am Reply

We have a printer that runs with the HP45 cartridges. Now we are in an area were voltage at times can drop
below 100V which is the minimum for the printer to run. Especially during cold month the voltage drops to
around anything from 90-98V. We get this issue with nozzles of brand new cartridges not firing and the nozzle
test print looking terrible. We tried over 20 cartridges over the last couple of month and none of them produced
a good result. I`m beginning to wonder if this could be due to the low Voltage.
Maybe someone who knows about this stuff likes to answer:)

Jean-Francois Payeur
March 17, 2018 at 1:04 am Reply

get yourself a variac to manualy boost back the power:)

Restani

April 4, 2017 at 4:22 pm Reply

Hello, can you help me?

I’m creating an HP 45-series printer for learning.

Murali
February 2, 2017 at 12:50 pm Reply

Hi,

I know the post is 6 months old but if you’re still here? can you tell us how to estimate the ink level in cartridge,
It’d really helpful.

dragonator
February 2, 2017 at 7:13 pm Reply

Simple answer, no.

The head has no way of measuring it’s own fluid level and there is no on board chip registering
how much ink is deposited. The only thing you can do is measure that the head is completely
empty. If this is the case, the head will heat up rapidly because most of the heat is not going to
the ink but to the head.

Nursalim
January 17, 2017 at 7:37 am Reply

hi i from Indonesia
I want to buy HP45 Controller V1.01
how much it costs?
I want to try to make my own printer

Sorry, my English is not good

My email nursalim_tms@yahoo.com

Danilo

June 3, 2016 at 1:09 pm Reply 

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