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Actual obsolete technology, pic from the robotron site: How do you get a map or blueprint into a computer before scanners were invented? Digitizer!  You got this device that looks like a mouse. And is basically a mouse with a small aiming sight. You put your blueprint on the table and trace it with your mouse. You mark the endpoints the lines that you want to copy into your computer. Simple. For the bigger devices you could even build it as the same unit as a plotter. If you don't know what a plotter is: You have a pen attached to two axes or motors, and so you can have the pen draw according to electrical signals. Not always digital, even. A unified head, with aiming point for the digitizer mode and two holders for a pen or a pencil or a cutter to make lithographic masks.  This is how the combined plotter and digitizer unit looked in 1980. Big enough for A0 paper, weighs in at 340kg. 
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Sep 15, 2021 00:10
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Awesome post. We had a nice... 6? 8? color plotter in my high school drafting class. I used to love watching it print big complex multicolor drawings, switching between the pens and jumping around the paper.
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Sep 15, 2021 04:21
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I heard someone in the [redacted] industry like two years ago say they still used plotters for big sizes for some reason, but I can't remember the loving reason. e: Actually I guess it's just because they literally don't make printers that big.
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Sep 15, 2021 15:09
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My dad is an engineer and I remember going to his workplace as a kid just before AutoCAD became a thing. I loved watching them do detail work with those things.
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Sep 15, 2021 15:23
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My grampa used to service what I remember him calling 'dodge scan machines' and I loved tagging along with him. They were the size and shape of an office copy machine but entirely analog. They had so many wonderful lenses and mirrors inside. I can't find anything similar by that name on Google now, so I don't know how to describe what they actually were.
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Sep 15, 2021 21:34
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I heard someone in the [redacted] industry like two years ago say they still used plotters for big sizes for some reason, but I can't remember the loving reason. Modern plotters are just big-rear end inkjet printers though. No pen whizzing around.  The paper comes on a big roll, so while width is still limited, you can do much longer prints these days.
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Sep 15, 2021 21:47
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On the other hand, laser cutters feel like direct descendants, and 3D printers are arguably in the same family tree.
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Sep 15, 2021 21:55
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Plotters are vector. Printers are raster.
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Sep 15, 2021 21:55
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DoctorWhat posted:Plotters are vector. Printers are raster. That's getting a bit muddled - HP sells machines they call "plotters", brands them as "DesignJet", and are entirely quiet about how they work. Looks to be inkjet, though. I mean, I get what you say and agree with it, but it seems the name "plotter" has also transferred to "prints big designs on roll paper no matter how".
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Sep 15, 2021 22:03
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In my highschool we had vinyl plotters, which were like pen plotters but they moved a knife blade around instead of a pen. Lots of fun!
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Sep 15, 2021 22:05
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Mischievous Mink posted:In my highschool we had vinyl plotters, which were like pen plotters but they moved a knife blade around instead of a pen. Lots of fun! How kafkaesque.
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Sep 15, 2021 22:16
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Computer viking posted:That's getting a bit muddled - HP sells machines they call "plotters", brands them as "DesignJet", and are entirely quiet about how they work. Looks to be inkjet, though. Yeah a plotter is just any printer that takes paper bigger than A3.
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Sep 16, 2021 00:16
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Looking at those pens is giving me flashbacks to using a Leroy lettering system.
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Sep 16, 2021 00:33
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My work used to print plans in A1 and A2. Eventually the old plotter broke down and was replaced by a HP designjet 111: It was such a piece of poo poo that you'd see people spend a whole afternoon trying to get a print that wasn't smeared, misaligned or torn. We had a plan drawer full of test pages because they'd choke up the nearby recycling bins. Every time we came back from holiday the ink cartidges were unusuable. Within a year everyone just formatted everything to A3 and if a client requested large print we'd just send them a PDF. Jaguars! has a new favorite as of 00:48 on Sep 16, 2021 |
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Sep 16, 2021 00:46
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In my mind the thing we worked on was, in size and shape, very much like a cocktail arcade cabinet. Like same height and general dimensions, flat glass top, all that. But these things had all kinds of knobs sticking out horizontally to adjust whatever image you were looking at. I'm guessing it was a way to look at large format microfiche documents?
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Sep 16, 2021 00:47
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Mischievous Mink posted:In my highschool we had vinyl plotters, which were like pen plotters but they moved a knife blade around instead of a pen. Lots of fun! You’ll find those at most sign companies.
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Sep 16, 2021 02:19
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Jaguars! posted:My work used to print plans in A1 and A2. Eventually the old plotter broke down and was replaced by a HP designjet 111: Yeah, these older DesignJets where literally nothing but HP consumer printers stretched out. They used the same printhead-in-cartridge design and internals as any run of the mill consumer printer. Like most printers of this design they did not seal the cartridge/printhead very well. So they would dry out if not used at least once a week. We had a few of them 15 years ago and they were nothing but a money pit for ink cartridges. Almost every time they went to go use one, at least one cartridge would be clogged up. The modern DesignJets are still inkjets, but the ink cartridges are stationary tanks of ink, with the print head being properly sealed and cared for when not in use. They don't suffer from the drying out problem anymore. And the print head is easily replaceable if need be. I maintain a few HP DesignJets and Canon IPF series at work, and both are the same design. But they are still just large format (and fast!) inkjets at heart. Ironically, all of our large format inkjet printers are far more reliable than any of the laser printers we have. They just..... work. Nearly all of the problems are people not understanding how to properly print something to them (scaling, rotation, setting the right paper size, etc...) .
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Sep 16, 2021 02:26
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DoctorWhat posted:Plotters are vector. Printers are raster. But the head is totally inkjet stuff. stevewm posted:Ironically, all of our large format inkjet printers are far more reliable than any of the laser printers we have. They just..... work. Nearly all of the problems are people not understanding how to properly print something to them (scaling, rotation, setting the right paper size, etc...) . Also the T1600 and another 26" were delivered DoA and needed a tech to come out and service them. Of course my work is gonna grab a new model because they're dirt cheap now compared to 5 years ago. And yeah, people not knowing how to format the prints is always fun.
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Sep 16, 2021 04:08
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If it doesn’t actually draw with a pen, it’s not a plotter. Also I think some of the nicer inkjet ones use ink tanks and a print head the width of the page. So they just continuous feed and print the entire width as it goes.
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Sep 16, 2021 04:30
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Yeah, at our work, the "plotter" is just a big laser printer. I guess technically, it's an LED printer, but same idea. It also has the cute name of KIP, so we can talk poo poo on KIP all day when he decides to take the day off.
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Sep 16, 2021 14:42
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FilthyImp posted:Depending on the model, HP may upset you on a vector/plotter card. Yeah we have several HP T2500 36-inch MFP units. Only issues I've ever had with them is a power supply in one (swapped out under warranty), and occasionally the line/edge sensor on all of them needs to be removed and cleaned. The Canon's on the other hand I haven't had to do anything with yet. But we haven't had the Canons as long as the HPs.
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Sep 16, 2021 15:17
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Mischievous Mink posted:In my highschool we had vinyl plotters, which were like pen plotters but they moved a knife blade around instead of a pen. Lots of fun! There were similar plotters in Ancient Rome, but they used 23 knives.
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Sep 16, 2021 15:20
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Also, while we're on the topic on printers, I want to touch on some of the undying beasts that Apple produced back in the day. The LaserWriter Pro 810 was my particular favorite workhorse. Fuckers would not die as long as you would replace a particular plastic gear every so often. They were made in 1993 and 1994, but I had one I was supporting well into 2004.
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Sep 16, 2021 15:34
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Explosionface posted:Also, while we're on the topic on printers, I want to touch on some of the undying beasts that Apple produced back in the day. The LaserWriter Pro 810 was my particular favorite workhorse. Fuckers would not die as long as you would replace a particular plastic gear every so often. They were made in 1993 and 1994, but I had one I was supporting well into 2004. When I was very young I was gifted an old Mac IIci and a old LaserWriter... The SCSI HD in the IIci appeared dead.. I eventually figured out if I spun the HDD platter by hand while it was powering up it would take off and start working. So I left the screws out of the top of it. Anytime I wanted to turn the computer on I would flick the platter with my finger while turning it on. Eventually I guess it worked completely free and I no longer had to do that. I still have that IIci to this day, and the original HDD still works. The LaserWriter burned up and stopped working, so I pitched it some years ago.
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Sep 16, 2021 15:40
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My parents have had a LaserJet 5 for 26 years, since the model first came out, and it's still going strong--even after spending the vast majority of its life printing in crazy bulk for my mom's job as a court transcriber. Never a problem. Absolute workhorse of a printer. Now our (light-use) Samsung laser printer is acting up after 19 years and we're thinking we ought to start shopping around. I'm dreading it. I don't think they make them like they used to.
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Sep 16, 2021 16:32
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Tunicate posted:There were similar plotters in Ancient Rome, but they used 23 knives. A2, Brutus?
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Sep 16, 2021 17:10
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Hokkaido Anxiety posted:A2, Brutus?
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Sep 16, 2021 17:25
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So, I mentioned that plotters don't have to be digital. Have you heard the good word of x-y writers?  You see those lab connectors? This is where the signal goes. You generally have a function generator that generates a fairly slow triangle wave on the X. And some sort of result to this on the Y input. I used one in a university lab, they are a good match with analogue oscilloscopes. You got your function generator on one channel applying a voltage on a diode or something. And a probe at a resistor in series to it. Old scopes have a mode for XY display, so that you can see the U vs I curve directly. For more complex equipment you got Lissajous displays in old broadcasting equipment, to compare two rf signals. An acquaintance told me a story of a scope they had at Wendelstein displaying the same figure for 30 years with appropriate burn in once it was finally turned off.  In that lab exercise we looked at the scope display and then attached the exact same lines to the analogue plotter, to get figures for our lab report. This was around 2005, so the more advanced labs had replaced them with digital scopes that could export files. Originally the competing technology was taking photographs of the scope screen. Analogue photographs, with films and a week of development.
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Sep 16, 2021 18:36
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Tunicate posted:There were similar plotters in Ancient Rome, but they used 23 knives. Hokkaido Anxiety posted:A2, Brutus? lmao
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Sep 16, 2021 19:04
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Hirayuki posted:My parents have had a LaserJet 5 for 26 years, since the model first came out, and it's still going strong--even after spending the vast majority of its life printing in crazy bulk for my mom's job as a court transcriber. Never a problem. Absolute workhorse of a printer. I think the B/W Brother lasers are the default choice now - the simple ones are boring in the appropriate ways.
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Sep 16, 2021 20:26
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VictualSquid posted:So, I mentioned that plotters don't have to be digital. I have fond memories of writing a program (in UCSD Pascal on an Apple II, really good stuff at the time) for drawing curves on something like this via some kind of D/A converter, in a physics course in school. Turned out that my first attempt was way too fast for this, as you said it needs really slow waveforms. The other time it was used was for the final exam, where our teacher demonstrated that beer foam exhibits the same kind of exponential decay as radioactive substances.
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Sep 16, 2021 20:57
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Computer viking posted:I think the B/W Brother lasers are the default choice now - the simple ones are boring in the appropriate ways.
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Sep 16, 2021 22:45
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VictualSquid posted:For more complex equipment you got Lissajous displays in old broadcasting equipment, to compare two rf signals. Back in the late 80s and early 90s I used to do laser shows for corporate events and rave parties. We had a few Lissajous generators to make animated patterns, before we eventually got a full colour vector system with beam cutters so we could do smooth animation. Ran it on an Amiga 3000 and 2000. I think it was the Pangolin system if memory serves. fake edit: oh yeah, here we are: http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/qm16
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Sep 17, 2021 02:51
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Gromit posted:Back in the late 80s and early 90s I used to do laser shows for corporate events and rave parties. We had a few Lissajous generators to make animated patterns, before we eventually got a full colour vector system with beam cutters so we could do smooth animation. Ran it on an Amiga 3000 and 2000. I think it was the Pangolin system if memory serves. That's extremely my jam and really hate that was born a little too late to be there in the rave/amiga peak. Humphreys has a new favorite as of 09:25 on Sep 17, 2021 |
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Sep 17, 2021 02:59
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Humphreys posted:That's extremely my jam and really hate that was born a little too late to be there in the rave/amiga peak. It was pretty cool, but I didn't spend a lot of time in that scene. We did a few Every Picture Tells a Story events (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Picture_Tells_a_Story_(event)) and I slept on Heidi and Richard's couch a few times. This flyer here:  The "5 watt...water cooled...argon laser" would have been ours I think but I've got no idea if I was at that one or not. The "Don't Shoot The Messenger" crew sound familiar. I think they used Amigas for 2D animation VJ stuff. I've probably got some old flyers for some of them in a drawer somewhere. e: Hey! Found half a dozen flyers just now. Adventjah 4, Cre@tion 5 , and Adrenalin all in Brisbane, Zodiac (Adelaide in '95), Pleasure (Melbourne '94/95), and EPTaS - the 8th Dimension in 1994. That Pleasure one was cool. They got DJ Unity over from the UK (played happy hardcore) and he was a really great guy to hang out with. A few days after the event we had a backyard BBQ for someone's birthday and Unity DJ'd it for us while he was there. Gromit has a new favorite as of 14:15 on Sep 17, 2021 |
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Sep 17, 2021 14:06
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Gromit posted:It was pretty cool, but I didn't spend a lot of time in that scene. We did a few Every Picture Tells a Story events (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Picture_Tells_a_Story_(event)) and I slept on Heidi and Richard's couch a few times. Giving me some real Space Tribe vibes and I love it! Speaking of, I just looked them up and the guy just died last month  Guess I'm going down a psytrance rabbithole for today in memory.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl88y135fi8
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Sep 17, 2021 15:25
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DJ Unity owns
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Sep 18, 2021 01:06
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Techmoan might have a problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD_-vLoJ9EM
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Sep 18, 2021 15:44
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Mister Kingdom posted:Techmoan might have a problem. I made it to the end! What di I win?
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Sep 19, 2021 02:43
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Humphreys posted:I made it to the end! What di I win? A minidisk player, if you'll pay for shipping.
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Sep 19, 2021 03:17
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