Minecraft Printer

[jleemero]

I made a printer in Minecraft.
It makes me happy enough that I figured I'd share it with everyone.

It uses the Piston mod.
Obviously.

It started out simply as a 2-color, 4x16 printer.
Pictures!
Built on hunches and broken dreams.
It did work though!

Went for a drive, drank some Dr Pepper, came home.
Made this.
It is a 4 color, 16x16 printer.
Almost any block can be used.
Ink "cartridges" have to be refilled frequently during use.
Biggest problem?
At the moment, it's manually driven.
That 16x16 picture of Konatas Eye took me a long god Dang time to make with this thing, trust me.
It's just levers. Lots of levers.
A single pixel takes me, I think 16 lever pulls.

It WILL be automated, via redstone.
I'll make it a "line" printer, you'll have a row of 32 levers, bundled into 16 groups of 2.
Each of those groups of levers represents a pixel, and with those 2 levers, you can pick between 4 colors.
Set 'em all, hit print, BAM, spits out a line of pixels!
Repeat this 16 times for a picture.
If I feel ambitious and this all goes well, there's a tiny chance I'll actually make a giant 16x16 pixel control board, letting you make a whole image with switches and pushing print.
I might do that. Might

 

[robm]

I need to look into this newfangled Minecraft thing.

 

[Zero]

This is actually really awesome. Kinda wish I could see it in action though.

 

[Antome]

Yeah, it's hard to see exactly how it works without a video or more pics.

But I reckon the finished result will be awesome.
I might make one myself, But I'll probably see your finished result first.

Edit:
I'm working on a 'printer' with vertical 'ink' loading.
It can only use two colours, but will be fairly easy to reload and could be scaled indefinitely.
Making it should be simple, but I haven't really practised much with redstone, so...

 

[jleemero]

My original was a vertical.
It pissed me off, just "working on it" was a Sega, which is why I went for this design.

With this design, it's possible for me to make a rotary ink loader, ala Ruger 10/22 magazine.
Should be possible to hold well over a thousand blocks in a single ink cartridge.

 

[βeta]

This is really cool. Was going to cross-post to /r/minecraft, but you already did.

 

[jleemero]

Pineapples

 

[Jidan]

I also found your post on reddit before here. You really are a raging pothead, aren't you?

Cool printer though, pistons need to get added into the game. The most I've built is just a massive castle

 

[jleemero]

More of an upper-class asshole with a short fuse and a fancy hat or two.

 

[Mario]

That's pretty impressive, but I'd probably find it more impressive if I'd ever played Minecraft.

 

[samjc3]

Ruger 10/22 magazine.

Yes. Just yes. Best mag design ever, on the best .22 ever, too. It makes me really happy at least somebody here besides me knows at least something about guns! Awesome printer, too.

 

[Antome]

Hadn't made any progress on mine the last few days,
Started wiring the loader today and found a glitch with the pistons.
Something to do with pistons next to each other forcing each other to extend in sequence.
Or I looked over something in my timer.

I'll like, redo the loader tomorrow or something,
considering how long it took to make it in the first place.

Although, if it does work it will work well, as it has a very high capacity.
(I'm going to assume Jlee's will be better however.)

The printer itself can no longer be scaled indefinitely, as I realized pistons only pushed 16 blocks,
but theoretically it could go up to 32x32.

It'll be cool to see Jlee's once it's done though

and once that guy makes the piston extensions, this printer business will get a whole lot easier.

 

[jleemero]

Started wiring the loader today and found a glitch with the pistons.
Something to do with pistons next to each other forcing each other to extend in sequence.
Or I looked over something in my timer.

No glitches, just wiring issues.

Although, if it does work it will work well, as it has a very high capacity.
(I'm going to assume Jlee's will be better however.)

Right now, I haven't *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ed with it.
I KNOW I could increase it, I could easily get 1000+ blocks per feed head.
But I haven't touched it yet, not my priority.

The printer itself can no longer be scaled indefinitely, as I realized pistons only pushed 16 blocks,
but theoretically it could go up to 32x32.

Yeah, originally I had thought 16x16 would be the most per printhead, then of course through arrangement you could manage 32x32.
I've put some more thought into it though, and, actually, it may be possible to go beyond that.

I've got 2 more printers planned.
The first one, will be further refined, and will be my first automated one.

The next one, will be a proof of concept, for a printer that's entirely contained within 2 axis defined by the print bed.
That is to say, it'll be 16x16 blocks, and however many deep it Dang well needs to be.
The point of this is that, if I can do that, and I think I can, it'd be possible to go beyond 32x32 pixels.
The work would be unbearable, but you could do it.

With WorldEdit, no reason not to just copy it a handful of times, bam, 160x144 display.
Start building a redstone gameboy emulator.
One frame every few minutes.

 

[Antome]

All was going well until
this happened


Happens every time I load wool into it....

redesign?

 

[jleemero]

You am bad at game.


Also, I've finished my newest printer, mechanically anyway.
Uses 4 colors, 16x16, same as last.
But, it's incredibly small by comparison.
A bit tall, and the ink-feeds at SUPER bloated, they reeeaaallly don't need to be, but I don't feel like *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ing around and figuring out a smaller one.
(Actually, I already did. But, I'm not retrofitting it to this one. Just, no, *Can'tSayThisOnTV* it.)

Anyway, it's small/compact/whatever.
AND, it's much simpler in how the ink feed works.
I could EASILY use up to 16 colors, 32 with a little work. (Less than an Hour)

With it being so compact and simple, the redstone will be infinitely easier than it would've been for the last one.
So, starting that tonight.

When it's done, it'll be posted here, and on /r/minecraft.

 

[Yoshilime M.R.]

wait a second...I saw this on reddit like a few days ago....


Oh god that was you? This is cool, but it's hard to understand how exactly it works...cool though!

 

[Antome]

Rather than struggling with the printer for now, I'll work on wiring the data reader/writer.

I would probably use 16 groups of 16-bit delay line memory, and if was 4-colour, 32-bit delay line.
so I have started the input with this:

(Our Internet's capped, so I compressed the image so it wouldn't take forever to upload)
levers to the left set the colours, and the lever on the iron block powers the pistons below the gold blocks,
allowing the final 'bitmap' to pass through to the delay line/clock.

Typing this, I realize the lever on the iron could in fact be a button, and the off pulse can then power pistons above the gold block,
thus blocking the passage again. (I imagine it will glitch out again however .-.)

 

[jleemero]

Typing this, I realize the lever on the iron could in fact be a button, and the off pulse can then power pistons above the gold block,
thus blocking the passage again. (I imagine it will glitch out again however .-.)

Do it, use a simple latch, it'll work.


Also, the way you've done that, I like it, I may use it.

 

[Yoshilime M.R.]

Hmmmm, looks like notch likes your printer...

 

[jleemero]

Yar, I know, already have my own screenshot too, lawl.