mastodon.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit

Administered by:

Server stats:

380K
active users

Amazing to think I’ve been playing with pen plotters for over 10 years (longer if you count my first plotter, the Commodore 1520 with my VIC-20). What started out as a curiosity has continued to keep me engaged as a retro computing enthusiast and captivated as an artist. I thought I’d go back in time with some of the plotters I’ve used in various ways. 🧵

The Commodore 1520 and the other variants based on Alps plotter mechanisms were a great introduction to pen plotters and I’m still amazed to find them stuffed into the oddest of retro tech like calculators and keyboards. The gears on these suffer over time and split but I designed 3D printed replacements that have been working well for me.

paulrickards

My first “pro” plotter was a HP 7470A back in 2014. I was blown away that these existed, being that my only exposure up to that point was the tiny “toy” plotters.

This plotter was so fast but suffered from having only 2 pen stalls and a pen head that could only use the short HP style of pens so it was limiting. Still, I got hooked immediately.

In 2016, I discovered a plotter kit by MakeBlock. This was a fun build and had lots of room for creativity by modifying it. I drew with a pen, burned with a laser, and drew in sand. The firmware wasn’t great and needed modifications to do constant velocity, which is necessary when using a laser.

Enter the Roland DXY-990 plotter. This was the top of the line model at the time, sporting 8 pen stalls and electro static paper hold. I liked this one so much I got three more Roland models.

I also started playing with white ink on black paper.

One of the loudest plotters I have is the Sweet-P Six-Shooter by Enter Computer. They basically took a HP 7475A tabloid, cloned it, shrunk it down, and sold it cheaper.

I brought this plotter to VCFEast, I couldn’t run it because it was so loud! 😆

Speaking of quirky, here’s the Mannesmann Tally Pixy-3 letter sized plotter. It used a magnetic pen stall that held the pens in place as well as magnetic strips to hold the paper down. Keep your floppies away! Its small, slow, and pens are unobtainiu but has a cute name.

Can’t forget about the HP 7475A, the best selling HP pen plotter. It set the standard that many other manufacturers followed including the grit wheel transport and the HPGL language. Just about every software package of the time supported this plotter. Later HP plotters emulated this machine, including inkjet plotters! I also have a rebranded DEC LVP16.

Now we’re getting serious. The HP DraftPro DXL was my first large format plotter purchased in 2017 and is still in use in my workshop today.

Introduced in 1988 at about $5,000, it was much cheaper than HP’s previous large format machines.

This machine does my 24”x36” CMYK works now which usually run between 6 and 10 hours.

Penman! It’s a plotter! It’s a turtle! It’s a mouse! Originating in England from 1985, it does it all with a unique detachable turtle design. It also does some clever maths to prevent itself from getting tangled in the ribbon cable while plotting.

I have several of these and unfortunately they all suffer a failure mode that I haven’t been able to resolve.

In early 2017, I picked up this Graphtec MP2300. It’s very similar to the Roland in features: 8 pens, tabloid size, electrostatic paper hold, and HPGL language. It’s a decent plotter. However, it doesn’t use HP style pens. It uses Graphtec style with metal rings for magnetic pen stalls, like the Pixy (and likely the same too— I need to check).

Another day, another giant plotter. This HP 7585B is a 36” wide plotter, made from cast metal parts and is impressively sturdy and heavy. I couldn’t fit it in my vehicle but the local seller was motivated to get rid of it so loaded into their minivan.

Boxes of pens usually come in tow when I get a plotter which are a mixed bag.

The HP 7585B smoked upon first power up and proved to be a tricky repair (for me). I wrote about that experience:

biosrhythm.com/?p=2722

biosrhythm.com» HP 7585B Pen Plotter Repair

Once it was repaired, the HP 7585B became MVP (most valuable plotter) 😆 It’s super fast, can plot up to 36”x48” (A0), and can run all day without issue.

Introduced in 1982, it cost $21,900!! 😳 Adjusted today would cost $67,521!! 💸

There’s a lot of clever engineering in this machine like Teflon coated paper paths to reduce friction.

I liked the Roland plotter so much I got another. This is an updated version, the DXY-1200, same electrostatic paper hold, coordinate display, but a bit faster.

And another: the Roland DXY-1150. It lacks electro static paper hold and coordinate display but pretty much the same as the 1200. This one began life as a cable label printer. Today it’s my specialty plotter for floppy disks and the like.

And here’s peak HP desktop plotters: the HP 7550+ which features an automatic paper feed tray (letter or tabloid if you have the tray), 8 pen carousel, and the fastest HP desktop plotter made. I use this plotter all the time for draft ideas as well as postcards. It’s also a crowd favorite at shows. ⭐

Even Apple got in on the plotter gig with the Apple 410 Color Plotter. It’s styled just like an original ImageWriter. It’s actually an OEM’d Yokogawa YEW PL-1000. The pens are really weird and aren’t used anywhere else that I’m aware of. It’s also really slow. Other than the fact it’s from Apple, it’s a snoozer.

Wait, there’s one more Roland and it’s a big one.

The Roland DPX-2000 is an ANSI C sized plotter. They basically scalled up their DXY A3 series plotters and kept all of the features: 8 pens, coordinate display, and electrostatic paper hold. Everyone loved it at VCF East. It’s a little on the slow side but I think that makes it more captivating to watch.

One more HP: the big brother to the DXL, the HP DraftPro EXL. Basically the same except 36” wide paper path. This one I got on eBay and much to my surprise wasn’t damaged in shipping at all.

You adjust the paper width manually by sliding the right side grip wheel, anywhere from 8.5” to 36” so it’s very flexible on paper sizes.

In 2020 I got a Sharp CE-515P plotter. It’s small in comparison to most, and uses either roll paper (4” or 8.5” wide) or letter sheets. It has a trap door where it stores 4” wide roll paper! I think it was meant to pair with a Sharp slabtop.

It uses an Alps mech so it needs those same tiny ball point pens that the Commodore 1520/Atari 1020/etc. uses.

@elliot @paulrickards Or one that you could clamp to a random whiteboard, and then have it draw complicated diagrams or equations while nobody is present, then remove it before anyone comes back.

Or as a drone with a mowing attachment, to make crop circles 😂

@paulrickards Oh cool - I assume that's the same Roland as in the audio gear space!? They must've been uncertain about their target market for a while, moving into office/lab equipment.

I'll have to go visit their website to see if anything out of the audio space still exists in their portfolio.

@ottaross The same Roland! They still make vinyl cutters which are basically the same as a plotter.

They even have their name Roland written large on the back of the plotter, just like a keyboard ready for stage performance! 😄

@paulrickards Ha! Would be funny to have a plotter on stage illustrating musical numbers during a performance.

@paulrickards Aha - the vinyl cutters lead me to a different web page, where they explore their other portfolio. Interesting!

@ottaross I guess technically it was Roland-DG.

@paulrickards …their product space is pretty much music & audio now… although they do offer a liquid polish product for glossy grand pianos. lol

@paulrickards I’m impressed that its dead reckoning is precise enough for that! Could a modern, wireless version be built?

@avi It is impressive engineering. I’m sure anything can be built now given enough effort, time, money, etc. ☺️

@paulrickards yeah I guess that was a dumb framing of the question.

Do you have any sense of how expensive it would be?

@avi I’m not sure to be honest. I’ve never built anything like it before.

@paulrickards this thread has became the mother of all penploter threads

@paulrickards I have one of these but need to expand my repertoire of 3D printed pen adapters to cover more options!

@andypiper I printed a few adapters from Thingiverse including the Sharpie adapter.

@paulrickards yep, I have Sharpie, and I have some that fit Sakura Micron, want to make some for Staedtler, Uniball and some other brands.

@paulrickards I hope you used soft felt tipped pens! :)

@paulrickards I had forgotten about that thing. Remember the other Apple printers?

@paulrickards when did this one come out? One interesting thing is that the early Mac graphical system (QuickDraw) was black and white, but had support for something like plotter colours: 1-bit deep drawings in red, green, blue, black, cyan, magenta or yellow.

@thias It was introduced in 1983 for the Apple II and III but there are software packages like MacPlot that work with it.

@paulrickards Thanks, very interesting I'm implementing a QuickDraw renderer for modern macintoshes, and I'm looking for old files that use this colour feature.

@paulrickards how on earth was someone able to ship that? were the stand and plotter shipped separately?

@paulrickards thanks for the history. These are so flipping cool. I have a project that I’ve wanted to do for like 20 years. How good are these at reproducing cmyk color?

@Random_Seed I use CMYK inks a lot in my generative work. Reproducing a photo is a challenging exercise in programming but is doable.

@paulrickards makes sense. Creating colors with pen is no small feat, let alone programmatically. It’s really not the same as printing ones art, as in to “make a print”. Super cool what you do.

For my project, I think I need a paint mixer thingy that takes CMYK value input and produces the exact color in small quantities. On demand, automatically.

@Random_Seed In my works, the paper does the mixing of the inks which works pretty well for color and value.

I wonder if something like a modified paint mixer you see at the hardware store might work?

@paulrickards I remember my dad's plotter (he was an architect before retiring), black & white but A0 too, I was 12 and in awe

@colin_mcmillen That’s a great memory- thanks for sharing!

@paulrickards You're welcome :)
By the way, what kind of file format do plotters take?

@colin_mcmillen It depends. Most use HPGL language, started by HP. Others may also use their own in addition to HPGL. While still others use their own language entirely. It’s usually very simple, pen up and down, and coordinate pairs in some format.

@colin_mcmillen It’s all usually ASCII that you can read and write with a text file.

@paulrickards i ll have to look at what kind of software writes this format