How many still have a pen plotter in use?

[Tom Rick]

I am setting up a new shop and was thinking about dragging my big old Hp pen plotter out from storage & see if I can put it too use.

How may of you are using a plotter and how are you using it? I am thinking real drawings for clients and perhaps full size parts drawings would help around the shop. I have always enjoyed drafting so I will have a table set up as will with a decent drafting arm.
Another question on this- anyone know how to get modern laptop to output to a serial device like these old plotters? Possible?

Good day all

[David Cefai]

1. You'll probably find that the running costs (ink cartridges) are unacceptable, assuming that you can find them. I don't know what size paper your plotter can take but large inkjets are not that expensive nowadays. My 10 yr old A3 printer cost a lot less than an A4 plotter I bought in 1991.

2. For serial output you will need a USB to Serial converter. Your laptop will "see" a new serial port. (You need to install a driver). Warning: not all may work correctly for what you want so choose carefully. Good luck.

[David Winer]

...
Another question on this- anyone know how to get modern laptop to output to a serial device like these old plotters? Possible? ...
Wow, pen plotters! I used to enjoy those wonderful machines. Mine was quickly put out to pasture when color printers were invented. Could be fun to use now, in the sense of resurrecting neanderthal tools.

I wonder if any modern graphics software includes drivers for pen plotters. Or, taking another approach, if any modern operating system would support the old software compatible with pen plotters.

[Tom Rick]

Wow, pen plotters! I used to enjoy those wonderful machines.Or, taking another approach, if any modern operating system would support the old software compatible with pen plotters.


I know I know..

This old gal used to sit in my basement at the end of a 50' serial cable.
Was way to much fun the hear the thing spring to life and start rushing around drafting out the dwg's
Still a hoot to watch.

My copy of AC 2000 still has drivers to the old HP series pen plotters..

[Art Bianconi]

I am setting up a new shop and was thinking about dragging my big old Hp pen plotter out from storage & see if I can put it too use.

How may of you are using a plotter and how are you using it? I am thinking real drawings for clients and perhaps full size parts drawings would help around the shop. I have always enjoyed drafting so I will have a table set up as will with a decent drafting arm.
Another question on this- anyone know how to get modern laptop to output to a serial device like these old plotters? Possible?

Good day all

Tom, I'd be lost without my plotters! I have three of them. One is current vintage HP Design Jet 450C which uses ink jet technology. The other is a also a large format plotter, an Ioline converted from a pen to stencil cutter with an aftermarket knife in lieu of the pen to create thin film applications. Both of these are E-size machines.

I also have the ubiquitous HP A-B desktop pen plotter and am attempting to convert the pen holders to a more readily available generic disposable pen. A real workhorse, it suffers from the fact that the pens it was designed for are becoming increasingly rare and costly in this Ink Jet driven world.

I also make use of a HP laser jet 4M printer. It's old technology but it's the most cost effective method for generating small but precise drawings for use in the shop.

I do NOT do layout work anymore and haven't for over 30 years. Instead I print or plot full scale drawings, spray the stock with 3M adhesive, secure the drawing to the material and then simply cut to the lines on the paper, which at 600 DPI are far more precise than my laying out the lines the old fashioned way.

While I do have laptops, I do not use them for plotting. Instead I use my desktop units which are networked and which are all equipped with old fashioned serial and parallel ports.

Hope this helps some.

Art

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

I haven't used a Pen Plotter in over 10 years, but you may not be able to get drivers to work with modern Operating Systems. I remember having an inkjet plotter that wouldn't work with anything newer than Win98, due to a lack of drivers.

[Michael Gaynes]

...Another question on this- anyone know how to get modern laptop to output to a serial device like these old plotters? Possible?

Coincidentally, just tonight I was looking on eBay to see what plotters were available.

Chiplotle (http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/chiplotle/) may be an answer to interfacing with a modern computer.

[Chip Lindley]

On a whim, I bought a used HP tabletop plotter back in the late '90s. I never got it to work the way I wanted. Still have a package of plotter pins for it sealed in the original packages. Amazing machine, but I assume that large format ink jet printers make plotters obsolete for most drawing purposes.

The first plotter I saw, same model as mine, was at WalMart, and was used to create custom cards for all occasions. Amazing watching it work!!

[Douglas Repetto]

Coincidentally, just tonight I was looking on eBay to see what plotters were available.

Chiplotle (http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/chiplotle/) may be an answer to interfacing with a modern computer.



If you'd like to use a vintage pen plotter with a modern computer then Chiplotle should work for you. It's not a driver exactly, you don't use it to print from Illustrator or anything like that. Rather it's a set of tools for creating drawings via Python code, or for simply piping hpgl files through to your plotter -- Chiplotle takes care of buffering, filtering out bad commands, etc. There are other free tools out there (pstoedit, for example) that will convert from vector file formats to hpgl commands which you can then send to your plotter via Chiplotle.

I'm happy to answer any questions about Chiplotle, or join the mailing list of you'd like to get involved in the growing community.

http://chiplotle.org

best,
douglas

[Jamie Buxton]

Does a CNC router count? It is darn near the same thing. :)

[Hugh Jardon]

I have a Roland DPX-2600, a beast of an 8-pen machine. It takes A2 paper (about 20x30 inches).

A couple of years back I upgraded to Leopard from Tiger, and it hasn't worked since, but Chiplotle seems like it would do the trick for me! Thank heavens for UNIX!

I can quite easily imagine printing a design then pasting it to a board and cutting it out with the bandsaw.

Any other woodworking uses?

[Jerome Stanek]

I use my cnc as a plotter also. I will plot out cuts that have been printed on a substrate before I cut it to make sure the zero is right.

[John Neel]

And how many are still using a K&E drafting set? For that matter, how many know what a K&E drafting set is?

John

[Hugh Jardon]

No Keuffel & Esser here. I have a Rotring set of squares and compasses I got when I was about 13, and getting on for 30 years later, I still use it. It took me about 10 years to figure out what Rotring meant, even though the clue is in the logo!

[John Neel]

The Rotring site shows some very modern instruments compared to the K&E that I have. I wasn't an engineering or drafting student, but I coveted the K&E sets they had in the early 60's. I finally purchased a set from my brother's father-in-law last year. It hadn't been used in decades and very little at that. I cleaned it up and just used it again this morning. Not as modern as the Rotring, but works very well.

[Dave Lehnert]

What's a pen plotter?

[Hugh Jardon]

Being ex-military, my WAH-detector is way over to the right, but assuming it's a genuine question...

A pen plotter is a device that draws images. As in, it "plots" with a pen. Literally, a fiber-tipped pen that it draws with. If the software tells it to draw a circle, it moves the pen to a point on the circumference, brings the pen to bear on the paper, and then moves it in a circular fashion to draw a circle. Ditto lines and rectangles, or any other shape. The paper lies flat on the bed of the plotter, much like a CNC router machine. Many of the functions are identical.

The later inkjet plotters (and some cheaper pen plotter) used a roll of paper, and moved the printing head across the carriage, and then advance the paper.

Used by architectural firms, and for those requiring to draw a pattern, then cut it out. Some machines can have a knife attached, and cut vinyl stickers and such.

Pen plotters have very much fallen out of favor, and it would be almost impossible to buy a new one. The one thing that a pen plotter could do though that nothing else can, is draw in pencil.

Here's an example:

http://www.signmaster.co.uk/Cutters_Plotters/plotter-dxy/Newdxy1.jpg