Plotter
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A plotter is a machine that produces vector graphics drawings. Plotters draw lines on paper using a pen, or in some applications, use a knife to cut a material like vinyl or leather. In the latter case, they are sometimes known as a cutting plotter.
In the past, plotters were used in applications such as
Plotters retained a niche for producing very large drawings for many years, but have now largely been replaced by wide-format conventional printers. Cutting plotters remain in use in a number of industries.
Overview
Digitally controlled plotters evolved from earlier fully analog XY-writers used as output devices for
Pen plotters print by moving a pen or other instrument across the surface of a piece of paper. This means that plotters are
Plotters offered the fastest way to efficiently produce very large drawings or color high-resolution vector-based artwork when computer memory was very expensive and processor power was very limited, and other types of printers had limited graphic output capabilities.
Pen plotters have essentially become obsolete, and have been replaced by
X–Y plotter
An X–Y plotter is a plotter that operates in two axes of motion ("X" and "Y") in order to draw continuous vector graphics. The term was used to differentiate it from standard plotters which had control only of the "y" axis, the "x" axis being continuously fed to provide a plot of some variable with time. Plotters differ from
Electrostatic plotters
Electrostatic plotters used a dry toner transfer process similar to that in many photocopiers. They were faster than pen plotters and were available in large formats, suitable for reproducing engineering drawings. The quality of image was often not as good as contemporary pen plotters. Electrostatic plotters were made in both flat-bed and drum types. The electrostatic plotter uses the pixel as a drawing means, like a raster graphics display device. The plotter head consists of a large number of tiny styluses (as many as 21760) embedded in it. This head traverses over the width of the paper as it rolls past the head to make a drawing. The resolutions available may be 100 to 508 dots per inch. Electrostatic plotters are very fast with plotting speed of 6 to 32 mm/s, depending on the plotter resolution.[1]
Cutting plotters
Cutting plotters use knives to cut into a piece of material (such as
In recent years the use of cutting plotters (generally called die-cut machines) has become popular with home enthusiasts of paper crafts such as cardmaking and scrapbooking. Such tools allow desired card and decal shapes to be cut out very precisely, and repeatably.
Languages
A number of
SP1; PA500,500; PD; PR0,1000; PU; SP;
This program instructs the plotter, in order, to take the first pen (SP1 = Select Pen 1), to go to coordinates X=500, Y=500 on the paper sheet (PA = Plot Absolute), to lower the pen against the paper (PD = Pen Down), to move 1000 units in the Y direction (thus drawing a vertical line - PR = Plot Relative), to lift the pen (PU = Pen Up) and finally to put it back in its stall.
Programmers using
10 SCALE -1,1,1,1
20 FOR X = -1 to 1 STEP 0.1
30 PLOT X, X*X
40 NEXT X
50 PEN
60 END
History
One of the earliest plotter was Konrad Zuse's computer-controlled and transistorized Graphomat Z64 in 1958, also shown at the Hannover Messe in 1961.[4]
Early pen plotters, e.g., the Calcomp 565 of 1959, worked by placing the paper over a roller that moved the paper back and forth for X motion, while the pen moved back and forth on a track for Y motion. The paper was supplied in roll form and had perforations along both edges that were engaged by sprockets on the rollers.
Another approach, e.g.
Hewlett Packard and Tektronix produced small, desktop-sized flatbed plotters in the late 1960s and 1970s. The pens were mounted on a traveling bar, whereby the y-axis was represented by motion up and down the length of the bar and the x-axis was represented by motion of the bar back and forth across the plotting table. Due to the mass of the bar, these plotters operated relatively slowly.
In the 1980s, the small and lightweight
Plotters were also used in the
Plotters are used primarily in technical drawing and CAD applications, where they have the advantage of working on very large paper sizes while maintaining high resolution. Another use has been found by replacing the pen with a cutter, and in this form plotters can be found in many garment and sign shops.
Changing the color or width of a line required the plotter to change pens. This was either done manually on small plotters, but more typically the plotter would have a magazine of four or more pens which could be automatically mounted.
A niche application of plotters is in creating tactile images for visually handicapped people on special thermal cell paper.
Unlike other printer types, pen plotter speed is measured by pen speed and acceleration rate, instead of by page printing speed. A pen plotter's speed is primarily limited by the type of pen used, so the choice of pen is a key factor in pen plotter output speed. Indeed, most modern pen plotters have commands to control slewing speed, depending on the type of pen currently in use.
There are many types of plotter pen, some of which are no longer mass-produced. Technical pen tips are often used, many of which can be renewed using parts and supplies for manual drafting pens. Early HP flatbed and grit wheel plotters used small, proprietary fiber-tipped or plastic nib disposable pens.
One type of plotter pen uses a cellulose fiber rod inserted through a circular foam tube saturated with ink, with the end of the rod sharpened into a conical tip. As the pen moves across the paper surface, capillary wicking draws the ink from the foam, down the rod, and onto the paper. As the ink supply in the foam is depleted, the migration of ink to the tip begins to slow down, resulting in faint lines. Slowing the plotting speed will allow the lines drawn by a worn-out pen to remain dark, but the fading will continue until the foam is completely depleted. Also, as the fiber tip pen is used, the tip slowly wears away on the plotting medium, producing a progressively wider, smudged line.
Ball-point plotter pens with refillable clear plastic ink reservoirs are available. They do not have the fading or wear effects of fiber pens, but are generally more expensive and uncommon. Also, conventional ball-point pens can be modified to work in most pen plotters.
Vinyl cutter
A vinyl cutter (sometimes known as a cutting plotter) is used to create posters, billboards, signs, T-shirt logos, and other weather-resistant graphical designs. The vinyl can also be applied to car bodies and windows for large, bright company advertising and to sailboat transoms. A similar process is used to cut tinted vinyl for automotive windows.
Colors are limited by the collection of vinyl on hand. To prevent creasing of the material, it is stored in rolls. Typical vinyl roll sizes are 15-inch, 24-inch, 36-inch and 48-inch widths, and have a backing material for maintaining the relative placement of all design elements.
Vinyl cutter hardware is similar to a traditional plotter except that the ink pen is replaced by a very sharp knife to outline each shape, and may have a pressure control to adjust how hard the knife presses down into the vinyl film, preventing the cuts from also penetrating the backing material. Besides losing relative placement of separate design elements, loose pieces cut out of the backing material may fall out and jam the plotter roll feed or the cutter head. After cutting, the vinyl material outside of the design is peeled away, leaving the design on the backing material which can be applied using self-adhesion, glue, lamination, or a heat press.
The vinyl knife is usually shaped like a plotter pen and is also mounted on a swivel head so that the knife edge self-rotates to face the correct direction as the plotter head moves.
Vinyl cutters are primarily used to produce single-color line art and lettering. Multiple color designs require cutting separate sheets of vinyl, then overlaying them during application; but this process quickly becomes cumbersome for more than a couple of hues.
Sign cutting plotters are in decline in applications such as general billboard design, where wide-format inkjet printers that use solvent-based inks are employed to print directly onto a variety of materials. Cutting plotters are still relied upon for precision contour-cutting of graphics produced by wide-format inkjet printers – for example to produce window or car graphics, or shaped stickers.
Large-format inkjet printers are increasingly used to print onto heat-shrink plastic sheeting, which is then applied to cover a vehicle surface and shrunk to fit using a heat gun, known as a
Static cutting table
A static cutting table is a type of cutting plotter used a large flat vacuum table. It is used for cutting non-rigid and porous material such as textiles, foam, or leather, that may be too difficult or impossible to cut with roll-fed plotters. Static cutters can also cut much thicker and heavier materials than a typical roll-fed or sheet-fed plotter is capable of handling.
The surface of the table has a series of small pinholes drilled in it. Material is placed on the table, and a coversheet of plastic or paper is overlaid onto the material to be cut. A vacuum pump is turned on, and air pressure pushes down on the coversheet to hold the material in place. The table then operates like a normal vector plotter, using various cutting tools to cut holes or slits into the fabric. The coversheet is also cut, which may lead to a slight loss of vacuum around the edges of the coversheet, but this loss is not significant.
Contemporary uses of pen plotters
In the mid-to-late 2000s artists and hackers[5][6] began to rediscover pen plotters as quirky, customizable output devices. The quality of the lines produced by pens on paper is quite different from other digital output techniques. Even 30-year-old pen plotters typically still function reliably, and many were available for less than $100 on auction and resale websites. While support for driving pen plotters directly or saving files as HP-GL has disappeared from most commercial graphics applications, several contemporary software packages[7][8][9][10] make working with HP-GL on modern operating systems possible.
As use of pen plotters has waned, the large-format printers that have largely replaced them have sometimes come to be called "plotters" as well.
See also
References
- ^ CAD/CAM Principles and application. P. N. RAO.
- ^ "Cutting plotter". CUTCNC cam. 2011-10-09.
- ^ "DTF Drucker". Retrieved 2023-09-17.
- Hannover-Messe vorgeführt. Es zeichnete sich durch eine hohe Zeichengenauigkeit von 1/16 mm und 16 verschiedene Zeichengeschwindigkeiten aus und öffnete der Datenverarbeitung im Bereich der Graphik neue Anwendungsbereiche. Auch die Computerkunst erhielt den Startschuss mit dieser Maschine. Denn ab 1965 wurde die Z64 in der Bekleidungsindustrie zur Erstellung von Druck- und Schnittmustern eingesetzt. An der Entwicklung des Gerätes war der "optisch" orientierte Konrad Zusenaturgemäß besonders engagiert beteiligt. Vom ihm stammte der Gedanke eines "Binärstufengetriebes". Dabei wurden über das Addiergerät 15 verschiedene im Binärsystem abgestimmte Geschwindigkeitsstufen zur Führung des Stiftes auf der Zeichenbrücke rechnerisch überlagert und über Kupplungen zu- und abgeschaltet. Mit Hilfe des Gerätes ließen sich aufgrund von Berechnungen unterschiedliche Kurven sehr genau zeichnen. (128 pages)
- ^ "The Draftmasters" (video). Vimeo. 2009-05-12.
- ^ "El Muro". Berlin: UDK. Archived from the original on 2007-06-12.
- ^ "Chiplotle: an HPGL (Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language) Python API". Columbia.
- ^ "Processing".
- ^ "Hackaplot". HV‐A. Archived from the original on 2011-02-27. Retrieved 2010-11-18.
- ^ "New Designjet Plotters Launches by HP in 2015". HP. 2015-11-25.
External links
- Media related to Plotters at Wikimedia Commons