Weightless Wonders

What happens when NASA combines inkjet printers and weightlessness? Teams from NASA’s Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program investigated this unique question and found some interesting results.

The teams set out to examine inkjet printers in microgravity, using high-speed video to capture each drop of ink. In order to achieve the weightlessness required for this experiment NASA used its Weightless Wonder airplane, also fondly known as the “vomit center". This experiment built upon the work of previous RIT teams, who participated in the 2008 Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program. The 2008 team proved that the basic functions of an inkjet print head are effective in microgravity because the printers had a satisfactory resolution for most print jobs. This is significant because inkjet technologies have been used in circuit board printing, bioprinting, and three-dimensional prototyping.

The 2009 RIT team studied how the formation of an ink drop tail can affect the print resolution of an inkjet printer in microgravity. A drop tail can form at many different points on the print head nozzle of most printers. This can affect the way the ink drops onto a piece of paper as an image or document is printed, and can even lower the resolution. The team focused on the way the drops were formed, where the tail was located, and how each of these factors affected the paper and print resolution. The team used an Epson C120, which is the same printer that was used in the 2008 experiments. The experiment used a laptop computer, two printers, and a drop-imaging device (DID), which included a high-speed video camera. The DID will consist of a high-speed video camera to study drop ejection, flight, and the impact on the paper. The teams presented both years of research along with test rigs that were used during the experiment. Their findings were that the way a drop tail is formed can have a significant impact on printer resolution.