In recent years, the development of new technologies for rapid prototyping has seen a significant rise. One of those technologies is printing electronics with commercially available inkjet printers by replacing the genuine ink with an electrically conductive nanoparticle-based ink. In contrast to piezo-based inkjet printers there are still problems with thermal-based printers, due the fact that the boiling point and the specific heat capacity of the electrically conductive inks do not match those of the genuine ink. The aim of this thesis is to reverse engineer thermal inkjet printer heads. This enables a manual control of printer heads' nozzles and to observe the ejection of the ink. As a consequence the chemical compound of the electrically conductive ink can be modified, so that it shows similar characteristics as the genuine ink.

Keywords: inkjet, printer head, printed circuits, printer head interface

August 12^th, 2016