New DaVinci color 3D printer - let's hack it

Makerspace Areas DigitalFab
1

Hey all,

While I was at the space today getting checked out for the 3D printer, @Evelyn mentioned a recently-arrived, new-to-LMN printer waiting for some research. It’s an XYZ Printing da Vinci Color, an okayish printer from several years back with one really neat trick: CMYK inkjet cartridges in the print head that let you print objects in arbitrary colors and patterns.

However, XYZ decided on the traditional printer business model of cheap printers and vendor locked-in expensive refills. The filament spools have an NFC chip in them that saves the amount of filament remaining on them, and once it runs out, the printer will refuse to let you feed in 3rd party filament.

I’m not sure what their asking price was (the links to the shop on their website now lead to a 404 page, if you’re wondering whether that business model was a good idea), but fortunately some fellow cheapska- er, thrift enthusiasts have already done the hard work of hacking the filament tags and figuring out how to make fakes.

Assuming the rest of the printer is in decent condition and the inkjet system is still useable (a bit dubious, granted), we should be able to take a roll of white PLA, slap an NTAG213 sticker on the side (I have 80 lying around; they’re cheap as chips), write the data the printer expects to it with any NFC-enabled smartphone, and start printing in full color.

I’ve really only done some initial research on the process, so there’s plenty more that needs to be done to boil things down enough to fit into an SOP. This forum seems to be the best source for info.

Filament shenanigans aside, the printer hardware also needs to be checked out. If any of this sounds like something you’d be interested in, chime in.

3 Likes
3

Small update: I tinkered with the printer for a few hours on Sunday night, and made a small amount of progress. I found an old Android app that may have successfully programmed one of the NFC stickers. However, I couldn’t figure out where the reader was on the machine to get it to load the filament.

You see, we have an official XYZPrinting filament spool, but it’s not the right kind. I looked online and found an intro video that shows the filament being installed: https://youtu.be/C-3_ihpqqIo?t=118. That central white plastic piece is missing on our spool.

From looking at the wiring on the spool holder (a bunch of wires inside with only two going out to the rollers), I initially assumed the two tires were a weight/presence sensor and the NFC antenna must be inside the unit, where the holder folds out from, so I put the sticker on the side of the spool near the opening. No dice; unit didn’t detect any spool.

As I was heading home, the obvious answer hit me: The tag is in the white plastic part of the spool, the reader is on the underside of the spool holder, and those two wires are for the NFC antenna. In retrospect, duh.

I can’t actually test this soon, but I suspect if we just tape the NFC tag to the bottom of the holder, it should allow you to load the filament. If anyone is in the area and feeling adventurous, please give it a shot and report back. The printer is in the conference(/storage?) room slight left as you walk in the front door. The programmed tag is on top of the unit, on a separate piece of backing from the rest.

Another, less pleasant thought occurred to me: where are we going to get ink? An old review mentioned an issue where after a single small print, one of the ink cartridges glitched out and dropped from 100% to 0%, and the machine refused to print afterwards. We can get aftermarket ink and try our hand at refillng the cartridges, but without reprogramming the chips or bypassing the ink level check, we’ll be left with a noisy single color printer with a non standard slicer and smaller print bed than the Prusa.

If we can’t keep this printer’s party trick working, I really don’t see why we should keep it instead of sell it for funds. Thoughts welcome.

1 Like