Low Cost Braille Embosser

Design Team
Benjamin Braggins, Molly Brown
Patrick Cleary, Jeffrey Witkowski

Design Advisor
Prof. Gregory Kowalski

Abstract
Many braille readers are restricted from printing personal documents and e-mails by the high cost of braille
printers.

Printing braille is actually embossing the paper and requires a special embosser.

Braille

embossers cost from $2000 to $6000 whereas personal inkjet printers cost from $35 to $400. A new design
for a mechanical assembly and its interface with electronic controls in order to emboss braille is outlined in
this report. Cost reduction while maintaining braille quality is the major priority. The entire mechanical
assembly is designed to retrofit an existing inkjet printer with feasible modifications to the inkjet printer
and requiring minimal retrofit assembly. The mechanical assembly, additional electrical components and
their integration into the printer are outlined in this report. The individual dots embossed on the paper are
made by applying force to pins in a 2x3 pin pack. This design is unique because it regards each braille
character as two independent columns of three dots as opposed to an entire 2x3 matrix of six dots thus
drastically reducing the number of possible combinations of dots. Every permutation for a column of dots,
a half braille character, is cut around the circumference of a wheel. Two wheels are independently rotated
to form a braille character which then causes the appropriate configurations of pins to emboss the paper. A
prototype is using an Epson NX-415 inkjet printer is completed and printed samples given to the National
Braille Press for review.

The Need for Project

Current braille embossers cost

The National Braille Press estimates that 2% of the population of

$2000+ make everyday printing

the United States is blind. Despite advancements in audio interfacing

(e-mails and documents)

and other technologies, the blind community still relies largely on

impractical for the blind

braille for communication and documentation. Printing e-mails, forms

community.

and reports for personal use as well as distribution of material is critical

for the blind community and their integration into society.

It is

important that schools be able to afford to accommodate blind students

and offices to engage blind professionals. Current products on the
market retail for at least $2000, a financial burden that institutions and
blind individuals often cannot bear.

The Design Project Objectives and Requirements

Design a braille printer that

Design Objectives

produces quality text at a lower

The goal of this project is to produce a low cost braille embosser.

cost than products currently

The system must be easy to manufacture and maintain. Since it is

available

retrofit to an existing inkjet printer, the easiest installation requires a

self-contained braille mechanism. The quality of the printed material
must be comparable to what is produced by current embossers while
satisfying braille dot requirements set by the Library of Congress
standards. The production price of a complete braille embosser must
be much less than what is currently on the market to meet the needs of
the blind community.
Design Requirements
The printer must emboss standardized braille with accuracy and
repeatability. The system must deliver the embossing force required
for standard braille paper of 6 N per dot. Using this force, it must take
no longer than 20 minutes to print a page. The embosser must not
exceed the current standard of 60 decibels during operation. Finally,
the final product should cost no more than $300.

Design Concepts considered

Two approaches were

Two different types of designs were selected as possible solutions

considered, viscous ink and a

to satisfy all requirements. Viscous ink provided a chemically based

rotating wheel. Development of

process as opposed to the mechanical method of an eight-sided

the rotating wheel resulted in the

patterned wheel.

final design.

Viscous Ink
Viscous ink was considered because it takes few additional parts
and adjustments to switch from regular ink to a textured adhesive.

However, it was found that this design does not satisfy all design
requirements.

The final printed braille could not be held to any

standard of repeatability or quality.

Many outside factors would

contribute to inconsistency including temperature, humidity, and paper

type. Furthermore, standard braille is embossed paper not an adhesive
on the surface of paper; a tactile difference undesirable to a braille
reader.
Braille Pointed Star
The second approach is more mechanical and eventually evolved
into the final design used on the prototype. The fundamental concept
breaks a braille character into two separately produced halves. Each
possible permutation for a half character is embossed on a point on the
metal star. The star would be rotated until the appropriate point is
aligned above the page and then pressed into the paper. Two rotationpress sequences produce a single character.
2 stepper
motors

This design requires

detailed components and the removal of inaccessible components in the

inkjet printer and therefore does not satisfy manufacturing requirement.
Vertical Octagon Wheel
By taking the eight, half-letter permutations and aligning them
around the circumference of an octagon instead of a star, two octagons
side by side can now print a whole letter at a time. This design is
compact, fitting within the ink cartridge tray that already exists within
the printer. Also the printers control system for the ink cartridge tray
could be used to reduce control system adjustments. Each octagonal

Side by
side wheels

wheel would be rotated by a stepper motor to change the braille

characters. The wheel-motor assembly would be actuated into the page
using an eccentric driven by a DC motor. This design addresses all
requirements but printing would be interrupted due to the clearances
within the inkjet printer.

Recommended Design Concept

Computer controlled stepper

Design Description

motors align wheels to punch pins

The recommended design removes the original components of the

paper which deforms into the back

ink cartridge tray and replaces them with a mechanical assembly. The

plate to emboss the correct dot

resulting braille embossing method involves three operations managed

geometry.

by one control system.

actuation, and embossing.
Braille Letter Selection

These are braille letter selection, linear

Two eight-sided embossing wheels rotate in a plane parallel to

the paper and are controlled individually by stepper motors. Each
embossing wheel contains a series of holes along its circumference
that corresponds to all possible combinations of one-half a braille
letter. Dots that are not in the selected braille character correspond to
the pins located below these holes whereas dots made are from the
pins that contact the solid portion of the wheel. Hall effect sensors
track the distance from a home location for each wheel to keep the
system aligned.
Linear Actuation
Once the wheels are aligned to print the correct letter, they are
Linear actuation of a
pin, forming the paper
into the back plate

driven towards the page by an eccentric shaft connected to a DC

motor.

The shaft is placed through the frame of the mechanical

assembly and is supported by a sleeve bearing on the opposite side of

the motor. The eccentricity of the shaft is one millimeter causing a
linear vertical displacement of two millimeters.

The DC motor

delivers a torque of 3200 g-cm, which exceeds the minimum force

needed to emboss all six dots in a single actuation.
Embossing
Once actuated downward, the wheels contact a matrix of pins that
are either pressed into the page by the DC motor force or pass through
the holes in the wheels and do not contact the paper. These pins are
constrained in a housing where they do not interfere with realigning
the wheels for the next letter and are spring loaded so that they return
to their original position after embossing the paper. The pin point is
rounded to prevent puncturing the paper.

The paper rests on a

stationary back plate on which columns of three dimples are cut. As

the rounded pin points are pressed into the back of the paper, these
dimples form the correct surface of the braille dots from the front of
the paper.
Control Systems
Motor drivers and control code were written to send signals to the
stepper motors indicating the angle that will align the proper letter and
to run the DC eccentric motor at a constant speed. The existing inkjet
motors were adjusted to track the mechanical assembly across the
page as it embosses a line of braille and feed the page down at the end
of a line. Hall effect sensors read magnets on the wheels to provide

feedback on the position of the stepper motors. The existing optical

feedback system is used in controlling the motion tracking across the
page.
Experimental Investigations
Prior to material and motor selection, the force required to print
braille was determined using a balance device. A mass was placed at
the center of the balance and the force was then divided between the
support end and the embossing end of the balance. 75 total samples
were taken using 20, 32, and 80 weight paper. The maximum weight
required was 1.5 kilograms for a single dot on the National Braille
Test setup for
force requirement

Press 80 weight paper.

Test pages made using the prototype assembly will be given to
blind readers at the National Braille Press to verify the quality.
Analytical Investigations
The DC motor responsible for linear actuation uses a shaft having
an eccentric of 1mm and must deliver a downward force of 36 N.
The eccentric axis is directly above the pins, eliminating additional
moments and maximizing the available embossing force.

The

required torque was calculated to be 900 g-cm.

Key Advantages of Recommended Concept
This embossing system requires minimal additions to an existing
inkjet printer making it the most cost-effective method to print braille
text from a personal computer. Having a simple mechanical design
minimizes opportunity for malfunction and allows for inexpensive
manufacturing and assembly. The inkjet printer is already equipped
with a paper feeding system and carriage that tracks across the page.
Custom circuitry and motors can be added to make the adjustments
from printing ink to embossing braille. Together the circuitry and
mechanical assembly can produce the same quality printer braille as
current expensive embossers.

Financial Issues
The prototype mechanical and

The total cost of the prototype is $456.38. The most expensive

electrical control assembly costs

part is the housing which was made from sheet metal for a single

$456.38. This will be reduced by

prototype but could be injection molded out of plastic for less on a

larger scale manufacturing.

larger scale. Results from finite element analysis of the part confirm
plastic as a material selection. The additional circuitry could also be
silkscreened onto a single custom board, further reducing the cost of

larger scale production. The final braille embosser will cost the
amount of the inkjet printer plus the mechanical assembly and
circuitry.

Recommended Improvements
Further electrical controls

The prototype is estimated to print one page of braille in twenty

development to make the retrofit

minutes. This is due to the speed of the DC motor and the eccentric

assembly universal to inkjet

shaft. Motors with more torque that are not physically too large cost

printers.

significantly more, however, with overall costs reduced on a larger

scale, a more expensive motor could be affordable.
With extensive research into personal computer to printer
protocols, it may be possible to create a single electrical control
system and mechanical assembly to fit any inkjet printer.
The size of the mechanical assembly is constrained by the braille
letter geometry but the entire assembly can be made smaller by
consolidating the control systems circuitry.

Further development

could be directed towards maximizing the amount of mechanical and

electrical assembly that can be done before the component is added to
the printer. This minimizes the retrofit process for the user.