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I learned to type on my dad's electric Smith-Corona luggable that he bought new in 1963, and his old manual Olivetti that he bought when he went to college after Korea. I used that Smith-Corona until I graduated college myself in the early 80s. It's still in my closet actually.
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Jun 21, 2017 00:27
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Kelp Me! posted:I grew up with one of these in the basement/my dad's workspace: Plotters are still around; they aren't as common but they're still around. They do a fan-loving-tastic job of printing big things cleanly. Printer technology has improved so there are fewer plotters around. The matter gets confused when somebody looks at what is just a really big printer and goes "yup, that's a plotter."
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Jun 21, 2017 00:56
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They still make new ones? I grew up with pen plotters thanks to my dad being an engineer and I do love watching a pen plotter operate, but I never see them anymore. Print shops and engineering offices all seem to run off of large format printers nowadays, I only see plotters covered in dust and stowed away in basements anymore.
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Jun 21, 2017 01:01
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Mondian posted:They still make new ones? I grew up with pen plotters thanks to my dad being an engineer and I do love watching a pen plotter operate, but I never see them anymore. Print shops and engineering offices all seem to run off of large format printers nowadays, I only see plotters covered in dust and stowed away in basements anymore. Yup - we have one on each floor at work. They're used mostly to do poster sized output.
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Jun 21, 2017 01:48
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The plotters they still make are mostly aimed at the Maker crowd these days, not business uses.
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Jun 21, 2017 02:46
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Goober Peas posted:Yup - we have one on each floor at work. They're used mostly to do poster sized output. But why? What possible benefit to they offer over a printer with a roll of paper feeding into it
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Jun 21, 2017 03:39
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They draw lines not points, and scale easily.
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Jun 21, 2017 03:41
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SLOSifl posted:They draw lines not points, and scale easily. Yeah I remember the one I used 17-18 years ago [gently caress I'm old] drew razor sharp lines. The output of that thing was beautiful. My horrible floor plans did not deserve to be represented so nicely.
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Jun 21, 2017 03:42
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So purely aesthetic reasons? I'm guessing they're used for art or something? I worked with engineers and architects for 15 years and never saw anything pen plotted or anything that came out of a large format printer that couldn't be easily read regardless of size or scale. Very confused right now.
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Jun 21, 2017 03:45
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Don't overthink it dude, they're specialty printers for scalable vector work, where line precision is important or desired. The idea is very similar how some CNC machines operate and has many uses from architecture and engineering to making signs and banners.
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Jun 21, 2017 04:02
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I've worked at two ISP's and plotters are still used to make huge rear end network diagrams. So places with big budgets and paranoia about paper redundancies. I'm going to guess there are a lot of plotters in government or military agencies.
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Jun 21, 2017 04:04
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The ship-building industry uses plotters as well.
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Jun 21, 2017 04:47
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They also use them to render xrays of your mom
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Jun 21, 2017 05:13
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Mondian posted:So purely aesthetic reasons? I'm guessing they're used for art or something? I worked with engineers and architects for 15 years and never saw anything pen plotted or anything that came out of a large format printer that couldn't be easily read regardless of size or scale. Very confused right now. Or could it possibly be that people liked using then because you wouldn't have to worry that some numbnut sent ImportantPlan.JPG instead of InportantPlan.PDF and the resulting output was legible but looked like poo poo?
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Jun 21, 2017 05:38
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Mondian posted:So purely aesthetic reasons? I'm guessing they're used for art or something? I worked with engineers and architects for 15 years and never saw anything pen plotted or anything that came out of a large format printer that couldn't be easily read regardless of size or scale. Very confused right now.  This is the industry that created technical pens so your lines will always be precise thickness. Of course they care about razor‐sharp plots.
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Jun 21, 2017 05:42
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Platystemon posted:
My mum had sets of these for drafting up plans. She owns.
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Jun 21, 2017 05:45
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Mondian posted:So purely aesthetic reasons? I'm guessing they're used for art or something? I worked with engineers and architects for 15 years and never saw anything pen plotted or anything that came out of a large format printer that couldn't be easily read regardless of size or scale. Very confused right now. Printers can't produce true diagonal lines for the same reason general-purpose grid displays can't. (A plotter relates to a printer the same way an oscilloscope or Vectrex tube relates to a regular monitor.) Nobody wanted to take chances with blueprints, and this was a bigger deal when things like dot-matrix printers and fax-quality inkjet and laser printers were still the thing. Now, of course, printers can deposit ink/toner/wax/whatever in fine enough detail that only being able to approximate diagonals isn't much of an issue, and many schematics live in vector-graphics files their whole lives and are never committed to hardcopy anyway. Also CNC cutters still work a lot like plotters, as you might expect.
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Jun 21, 2017 06:53
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Printers are Raster, Plotters are Vector. e:f,b
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Jun 21, 2017 07:00
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dont be mean to me posted:Printers can't produce true diagonal lines for the same reason general-purpose grid displays can't. (A plotter relates to a printer the same way an oscilloscope or Vectrex tube relates to a regular monitor.) Yeah thanks for the history lesson, but I already understand what the original purpose of this particular obsolete technology was. What I can't wrap my head around is why anyone would bother maintaining it in 2017.
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Jun 21, 2017 13:33
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We have multiple plotters. Engineering uses them to print up huge CAD drawings or circuit diagrams.
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Jun 21, 2017 13:36
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Can you give me an example of a specific thing? I'm not trying to be lovely, I'm just honestly curious. I worked on electrical and mechanical projects for USS, Mittal, municipal jobs, architectural MEP, and a few random other things and I never saw a pen plotter post 2000. I can't even conceive of what kind of job would require someone to work off a physical reference print and only that physical print, yet also be delicate enough work that the dots on the paper being off by a few microns would ruin it. I mean, the dimensions are always there if all else fails. When you say circuit diagrams do you mean super complex circuit boards? Even then all of that precise info would be input into the manufacturing process digitally. What use is a super accurate print?
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Jun 21, 2017 13:46
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At the sign shop I used to work at, our plotter could be converted within seconds to a vinyl cutter by just loading a roll of vinyl and switching the pen for a blade. Perfect for when hicks would order enormous Browning deer head logos or obnoxious jokes in huge bold letters that span the entire tailgate like "IF OBAMA'S 'YOUR PRESIDENT' THEN YOU CAN KEEP HIM!!!" or the ever-popular "IF YOU CAN READ THIS, FLIP ME OVER!" applied upside-down. As long as you kept the blade sharp, it would, without fail, give you whatever vector you fed it with amazing precision.
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Jun 21, 2017 14:22
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Mondian posted:Can you give me an example of a specific thing? I'm not trying to be lovely, I'm just honestly curious. I worked on electrical and mechanical projects for USS, Mittal, municipal jobs, architectural MEP, and a few random other things and I never saw a pen plotter post 2000. I can't even conceive of what kind of job would require someone to work off a physical reference print and only that physical print, yet also be delicate enough work that the dots on the paper being off by a few microns would ruin it. I mean, the dimensions are always there if all else fails. When you say circuit diagrams do you mean super complex circuit boards? Even then all of that precise info would be input into the manufacturing process digitally. What use is a super accurate print? 1) Plotters can be much faster than inkjets for some designs (e.g. a large diagonal line will be drawn as fast as the paper can feed) 2) Viewing architectural drawings is much easier on a 100cmx100cm bit of paper, rather than scrolling around an ipad on site 3) Many legal systems insist on hard copies of documents, not digital 4) Pen plotters use permanent ink, inkjet are water soluble. Handy if your builders tend to dribble
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Jun 21, 2017 14:44
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A super-accurate print of a circuit board layout is extremely important when you're debugging hardware and are dealing with surface-mount components and such, many of which are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. It needs to be accurate so you don't gently caress with the wrong resistor (the traces on the physical board are not always easy to understand or even visible at all).
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Jun 21, 2017 15:55
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Mondian posted:Can you give me an example of a specific thing? I'm not trying to be lovely, I'm just honestly curious. I worked on electrical and mechanical projects for USS, Mittal, municipal jobs, architectural MEP, and a few random other things and I never saw a pen plotter post 2000. I can't even conceive of what kind of job would require someone to work off a physical reference print and only that physical print, yet also be delicate enough work that the dots on the paper being off by a few microns would ruin it. I mean, the dimensions are always there if all else fails. When you say circuit diagrams do you mean super complex circuit boards? Even then all of that precise info would be input into the manufacturing process digitally. What use is a super accurate print? Wall sized circuit diagrams during the design phase. Back before Motorola got split into a million pieces (like 2011 or 2012), the radio engineering team used these to print out giant circuit diagrams to annotate during team meetings. This is where having an accurately scaled printout mattered and laser did not have fine enough tolerances (or the paper size at a cost effect price) to accurately reproduce things. I'm really not sure why this is making you upset.
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Jun 21, 2017 18:01
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He just wants you to describe a setting where it would still be useful. No not that setting, or that one, eh that's just a niche thing, same with that. Guys this thing is garbage I decided it never gets used for anything because I've never seen one and you couldn't describe a good common enough use for it where it was critical rather than just marginally better than all the other possible options.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:11
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TheQuietWilds posted:He just wants you to describe a setting where it would still be useful. No not that setting, or that one, eh that's just a niche thing, same with that. Guys this thing is garbage I decided it never gets used for anything because I've never seen one and you couldn't describe a good common enough use for it where it was critical rather than just marginally better than all the other possible options. psh why would I want something that's a marginally better option? Work's not supposed to be easy!
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Jun 21, 2017 21:40
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Kelp Me! posted:A super-accurate print of a circuit board layout is extremely important when you're debugging hardware and are dealing with surface-mount components and such, many of which are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. It needs to be accurate so you don't gently caress with the wrong resistor (the traces on the physical board are not always easy to understand or even visible at all). Sup, cats and electronics are also my jam. 
GRINDCORE MEGGIDO has a new favorite as of 21:57 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 21:55
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I would also assume that pen plotters are preferable in environments that aren't agreeable to clog-prone inkjet heads. Ever notice how your average inkjet printer clunks like crazy after you turn it on? It's literally spraying ink into a reservoir to clean the heads, that clunking sound is usually some kind of armature dabbing it with a piece of felt afterward. That's a lot of ink being wasted if it's used infrequently. With a laser, you have the energy overhead of heating a fuser. Pens seem to make the most sense for large high-precision vector images with a lot of empty space.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:12
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He's still talking about it because he's right? This is a super weird conversation where people seem to be talking in hypotheticals. Sure, a pen plotter is fast if you somehow only have to draw a few lines down a page. That's not a real application though. Electrical single line drawings, circuit diagrams, P&IDs and similar line diagrams have huge numbers of lines and symbolics that take a long time for a plotter to draw. Plotters are slow, generally loud, expensive and a bit fiddly. They don't give you greater resolution than a good large format printer, and if you were in some crazy application where the plotted line thickness was part of the design instead of being a formatting and ease of use issue (line weight is generally selected to communicate things or look good rather than being a design feature) a printer would be better because you aren't tied to physical pen sizes. I haven't seen one in use outside of a hobbyist context in 15 years. The last place just used it because it was fundamentally tied into their drafting standards and they didn't see the benefit of switching. Some places will have one still sitting in a corner of their document room, but they're not attached to anything and haven't been for a decade or more. I'm sure there are specific industrial setups that have specific equipment engrained in the process and are using pen plotters because of it. Nobody produces them anymore on an industrial scale though and haven't really for over 20 years. Even companies that used to make them and still make similar equipment don't sell them. Roland makes vinyl cutters that have the same general mechanism, but don't bother to market plotters anymore. They're definitely obsolete. Also super neat to watch though: https://youtu.be/1J9GBEQs-Cg Also, I haven't bothered to confirm, but going by the age and look, I'm pretty sure that the original picture posted that started this off was a large format printer  HP and some other companies had similar arrangements in their larger pen plotters, but they're much blockier.Edit: flosofl posted:laser did not have fine enough tolerances (or the paper size at a cost effect price) to accurately reproduce things. This is the disconnect... large format printers geared at the engineering market are generally better at both of these things? They have the ability to draw with a significantly higher resolution and they ended up being cheaper and easier to maintain? Are you sure it wasn't just the equipment you already had available and you didn't plot with high enough frequency to justify changing equipment if it was still working? Edit 2: There is also the possibility of confusing a large format printer for a pen plotter. Common parlance for a large format printer geared towards technical drawing production is still 'plotter'. You would tell people that you're plotting a drawing. Some manufacturers call their printers plotters as well. T.C. has a new favorite as of 10:15 on Jun 22, 2017 |
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Jun 22, 2017 09:20
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Somewhat related, have an old TV show showing how a photocopier works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2NIAD5qn7E
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Jun 22, 2017 09:34
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Typewriter chat and plotter chat come together in a little device I had in the 1980s, the Brother BP-30 graphing typewriter! This was an electric typewriter, obviously, but the way it worked means it was technically a plotter. You see, rather than conventional type arms / type ball / daisy wheel / dot-matrix print head, it had four tiny ballpoint pens in different colors, with which it would draw each letter by moving the pen back and forth and moving the paper up and down with the roller. Yes, really.  The main reason for this unusual design was so that it could draw perfectly clean graphs. You could input a limited set of data, pick what graph style you wanted, and hit go, and you'd get stuff like this:  I turned in many a school report with those graphs on them. Images all found here. The same guy made some videos of the thing in action. Here's a closeup of the pen and roller working together to make letters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zpdux9LKJY A really neat little device.
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Jun 22, 2017 11:39
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GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:Sup, cats and electronics are also my jam. I'm sorry you got probated GCM, to pass the time please enjoy this photo I took at work the other day, I call it "dear client's engineers: please stop wiring 24V modules into 120V power supplies"  (you'll notice that the blown-out IC is in a socket unlike the other ones so it can be replaced without de/resoldering; that's how often this happens)
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Jun 22, 2017 14:21
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Powered Descent posted:Typewriter chat and plotter chat come together in a little device I had in the 1980s, the Brother BP-30 graphing typewriter! I can't help but genuinely admire that doomed concept. It's like Dr. Moreau was let loose in an office supply store. Thanks for this -- it's exactly the kind of stuff I hope this thread unearths!
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Jun 22, 2017 15:53
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I want one. My lovely pie graphs from high school still haunt me.
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Jun 22, 2017 15:58
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Where does he find this stuff? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU-iSTj2cTY
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Jun 23, 2017 00:23
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I'm in awe of his research skills and ability to track down old magazine articles, ads, catalogs... Just amazing.
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Jun 23, 2017 05:05
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Mister Kingdom posted:Where does he find this stuff? He just designs and builds them now; nerds will believe anything!
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Jun 23, 2017 05:20
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Powered Descent posted:Typewriter chat and plotter chat come together in a little device I had in the 1980s, the Brother BP-30 graphing typewriter! I've got the Silver Reed version of this; the EB-50 Color PenGraph. Two bux at a yard sale back in 2005. Lovely machine. Uses the same pens as the Commodore 1520 color plotter. They're not really designed to be refilled but it might be doable with like a hypodermic syringe or something.
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Jun 23, 2017 06:27
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Collateral Damage posted:Speaking of typewriters, who remembers standalone word processors from the 90s? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFufNMgV-J0 My sisters had one of those Magnavox Videowriters from the late-80s/early-90s.
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Jun 23, 2017 07:06
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