A4-sized pen plotter - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: pixelsafoison
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 26, 2019, 10:22:18 pm
content: Hello there,I'm here to ask a few questions regarding the feasibility of an idea of mine, I can handle the hardware-side of things but I do need some advice regarding software.To put it bluntly, i'm too poor to buy ink cartridges, they cost me around 100€ a month and that's only to print text. I'm an engineering student and while having everything at hand on onenote is great, it still isn't the same as paper.Which is why I have started getting funny ideas about making my own A4-sized pen plotter... It's not THAT hard to design, sure I'll have a few fuck-ups but I'm pretty confident that I can design my own without too much trouble.The only thing remaining is the software... and ... Yeah ... while I hate to be like "pfeh, there's no software for it" while I'm contributing jack shit to fixing the issue is a behaviour I despise, I cannot seem to find any software aside from inkscape that can translate images/text to Gcode.If any one of you has any info on a good way to easily turn PDF/A4-PNGs to Gcode (= turn them into vectors and then translate) I'd be VERY grateful ...Many thanks in advance!PS: thanks for being such a f*cking awesome community!

author: TeddyPython
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2019, 10:51:57 pm
content: Taking a look at your problem that inspired this (ink costing too much at EUR100 per month), I would say that this would not be suitable and would waste time and money.How much do you print per month in terms of pages? Could this be done in black and white? EUR100 is about £90, which would buy me 3 XL cartridges of 'high yield' black ink from HP. That's a lot of printing.In fact, with £90, you could buy nearly _four_ entirely new printers each month, such as the HP Deskjet 2622, which prints in colour and comes with ink.One thing to consider also, is why we almost never see pen plotters anywhere at all. The inkjet is much faster, convenient and cheaper (because of economies of scale). I think you might want to consider the options above if the purpose of this is to save money, as the project would only return useful results after a lot of effort, time and money. Even then, the quality will unlikely be anywhere close to what the £25 printer (with ink!) would produce.My 1 cents.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2019, 11:30:07 pm
content: Designing and building anything you can readily buy to save money is the worst idea ever. It never ever makes financial sense. The amount of money you will spend on materials and R&D will be way more than just buying new printers when the old run out of ink.And yes, if you only print B&W, then get a laser printer. Their cartridges last forever.

author: jhpadjustable
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2019, 11:34:52 pm
content: Welcome!A pen-plotting system sounds a bit Rube Goldberg. There are more direct means to lower the consumables cost of printing. One is the refill kit. Another is the continuous ink retrofit. Yet another is to skip ink entirely and use a laser printer, where refill kits are generally pretty cheap.

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2019, 11:50:22 pm
content: pixelsafoison:Ink is a terrible idea for black&white text. For that purpose ink printers offer no advantage over other types, and they are always sucking your wallet hard. In particular “cheap” home printers, for which the business model is delivering a device — often at close to no profit to the manufacturer — and then earning on ink cartridges.Buy yourself a used (but not too old(1))small officelaser printer, using toner cartridge price/page as the guide in your selection. Those can be bought for 100–150€ and then you get 1000–5000k pages worth of toner for 20–60€.OTOH building a working and reliable plotter may be an interesting hobby project. But do it for fun, not for money saving. It will cost you a lot, having vibrations low enough to get even nice 75DPI will be hard, and it will be tremendously slow: at 1 character/s you will need 40 minutes to print a page.____(1)An old one will still work, but expect you will have to replace some parts. In long term this will still be cheaper than ink, but short-term it will require more money and your printer will learn a lot of foul language if it breaks a night before you actually need those things printed.

author: ConKbot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2019, 11:56:00 pm
content: +1 to laser for black and white printing if you're doing that much, $100 of toner would be in the 4k+ sheets of yield depending on the manufacturer of course.If your you're doing that much in full color, and it needs to be good quality (better than color laser) then a continuous supply inkjet system could be in order. The ink is a lot cheaper. I.e.http://www.cisinks.com/large-ink-refill-bottle-set-2500ml-for-canon-pgi225-cli226-cartridge-pixma-mg5120-mg5200-mg5220-mg5220-rfb-mg5320-ix6520-mx712-mx880-mx882-mx892-ip4920-ip4820-p-1863.html$100 for 5x 500mL bottles.No idea if that site is reputable, just found them as an example.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2019, 12:17:53 am
content: Sounds like a terrible idea. Have you ever seen one of these things plot out a page? You think you're just getting pages and pages of datasheets and equations at the same speed as a modern printer?If you're that determined to print, seek out a professional print shop or your school's printers."PDF/A4-PNGs to Gcode"Uh, no.

author: m98
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2019, 09:25:22 am
content: Don't want to advertise anything, but look up HP instant Ink. That's what I've been using in the office for years, and it really saves a lot for frequent printing.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2019, 09:55:46 am
content: Laser printer pays itself back in amonth. Plotting text is extremely slow, thing about tens of minutes per page!

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2019, 11:27:22 am
content: €100 a month is a LOT. How many pages are we talking? The cost per page varies wildly between printers.Contrary to popular belief, there’s noinnatedifference in page cost between inkjet and laser any more. There was in the past, but modern low-end lasers haveextremelyhigh page costs, just like low-end inkjets, and now there are many midrange inkjets available with very low page costs. (Indeed, the lowest page cost office printers in existence now are inkjet, not laser!!)With a decent midrange printer, you should be down at around €0.05 per page for black and white text.

author: pixelsafoison
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 27, 2019, 03:47:11 pm
content: Thanks for all the answers guys - I print roughly 500-800 pages a month, I'm using a Brother printer that can manage somewhere along the lines of under 200 pages per 30€ cartridge. Usually 150ishI've taken a look at HP Instant Ink and that may be a very interesting package for me. What I print is mostly text with a lot of graphics and schematics.The speed of a pen plotter isn't really an issue if I can manage to create an ejection mechanism (a pseudo-paper-tray) as it can run in another room without my supervision, however it is 100% true that no matter what, I'll have fuck ups in my design, some components will not have been chosen properly (AKA: by thinking like an accountant "TAKE THE CHEAPEST ONE!"), and I'll encounter problems that I didn't even know existed.Then the software end of things will have me begging friends in other fields for help which is something I hate doing as apparently no such software seems to exist.Regarding print shops, they are never open when I need them - I end up classes at roughly 6/6:30 PM and they close at 5. They also open later than my first classes - meaning that all in all it would be a complete chore given that there's no one day where I finish early.So I'll probably just go with an HP Instant Ink 20€ membership and see how things go ... That or switch to a lenovo 2-in-1 laptop and just use onenote for all the things instead of using paper. Annotating and so on...I never imagined needing a printer this much - I hate printers x)

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2019, 05:57:03 pm
content: I don't know that Windows uses the HPGL language to drive an HP LaserJet. Or even PCL. But, if it did, things would be easy. All you need to do is trap the HPGL and translate it to GCODE and that's going to be very simple.I did the reverse: I converted a LaserJet into a plotter. I have an implementation of an IBM 1130 running on an FPGA. One of the most important peripherals, to me, was the CalComp 1627 Drum Plotter. The 1130 emitted 100 6 bit codes per inch of travel. The codes were sparse, consisting of Pen Up, Pen Down, +x, -x, +y, -y. Obviously some combinations are mutually exclusive.So, in keeping with the concept of not changing the factory software, I send these codes to an ARM board (mbed LPC1768) where I accumulate steps, as appropriate, and ultimately convert the steps to HPGL which I send over the network to the LaserJet.It was a simple project. PCL/HPGL is well documented.The thing is, I don't know what the Windows driver sends to the LaserJet. One way to find out is to ask around. The other way is to build a TCP client on a Linux box that will become a printer as far as Windows is concerned. The client will grab the data and store it for later analysis. If it is RAW data, you're out of luck with that particular driver. There may be optional drivers.It seems to me that getting to GCODE from HPGL would be pretty simple. From RAW, not so easy... What does Linux CUPS bring to the dance?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2019, 06:50:59 pm
content: Short of not printing as much, of course, there's pretty much only one answer to your quest: just buy a low-cost laser printer, and move on with your life. For $100 of toner, you'll be able to print probably 10000+ pages. If you're currently using an inkjet printer, which I'm assuming, it's a plain disaster for high-volume printing.A pen plotter for printing datasheets and otherwise lots of documents? You must be kidding. It would probably take a whole week to print just one.Not to mention that it would "eat" up pens like candy and would cost you even more in pens than what you may for printer ink.And not to lecture you excessively, but back to my first point: you should definitely stop your current habit of printing everything, and build an habit of reading documents in electronic form. I agree it's easier to read on paper, but at some point you need to suck it up. If you do what you're currently doing at your first job, you'll get your managers angry, and if you keep doing it, you'll eventually get fired.

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2019, 08:58:25 pm
content: While I agree it is not a good idea to build such a printer to save money, the argument about ballpens cost is not true. I use the orange BICs (0.30€/pc here) for drawing, and they last for over 80 A5 pages — often including completely covering areas in the drawing. I believe that would be comparable to 40 A4 pages of text. That is 0.0075 €/pg, which is comparable to laser printing.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2019, 09:16:46 pm
content: €0.15-0.20 per page is extremely expensive. You’d be better off investing in a more expensive printer that uses cheaper ink. My Canon inkjet uses black cartridges that last for 500 pages and cost €15. That’s literally 1/5 the cost of yours. And there are printers that cost less still per page.Quote from: SiliconWizard on November 27, 2019, 06:50:59 pmI agree with everything except your claims about laser vs inkjet, because it’s just not that simple any more. Low end laser printers use $50 cartridges that last just 500 pages, and there are desktop inkjets that use internal ink tanks that last for 7000 pages (and come full!!), with refills costing $20.So again: the cheapest page costs in existence are now with inkjet, not laser. You just can’t look at the cheapest printers.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2019, 09:26:22 pm
content: Have you considered this:https://app.zerocopy.be/?No affiliation, but I've seen some of my students with it. Other than that: as others've said there are better ways to save money than to build a printer yourself.

author: ebclr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 28, 2019, 04:03:42 am
content: As an excuse to do a project ok fine, But ink cartridges are old school, new printers does not use a cartridge, and the cost per print is ridiculous low, you only fill up the ink, is a cartridge-Free PrinterEcoTank ET-4760

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 28, 2019, 06:52:00 pm
content: I agree with the other comments regarding the hardware side of this project. If you want to do it for the educational aspects, or just because it would be fun, go for it! Otherwise it's a complete waste of time and money. I liken this to rebuilding antique cars... if it's your hobby, more power to you - but don't try to convince anyone it saves money.However, my comments will focus on this aspect:Quote from: pixelsafoison on November 26, 2019, 10:22:18 pmThis is a seriously difficult problem. People have been toying with this for decades. Conversion from vector to raster always involves some data loss. STARTING with raster means you never had the "lost" data at all. While there are some software packages out there which take in raster and emit vector, it's not true vector data. It's a sort of bastardized, pixelated packaging of raster data within a vector representation.PDF can contain vector data. But most PDF's contain at least some raster data, and many are simply (again) raster data within a PDF wrapper. We often see these generated by non-Adobe sources.While the hardware side of this proposed project would have its own interesting challenges, and the outcome would not likely "save" you money the way you're hoping, I think you're vastly underestimating 1) the magnitude of the data conversion side, and 2) the quality you can expect as a result. Even if your hardware and firmware was perfect, you'll have imperfect GCode or HPGL to send it. GIGO still applies.Please don't interpret this as a wet blanket. If you are seriously interested in this project, go for it and report back. We'll all be interested and supportive. But please go into it with realistic expectations.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 28, 2019, 10:54:27 pm
content: Quote from: pixelsafoison on November 26, 2019, 10:22:18 pmyes its funny idea. after my study i did exactly this (mechanical side only, no electronics yet), its not around anymore, maybe its now ashes in heaven. but looking and thinking back from now, in term of precision, its a real fucked up. needless to say more, if you need precision, that will cost money, just google 3d printer and try to figure out whats the cost will be like, thats the best you can get with acceptable precision...Quote from: pixelsafoison on November 26, 2019, 10:22:18 pmto put it bluntly, you are doing something wrong. a ecotank printer likehttps://www.kamera-express.be/product/12220324is like 100€ around here (one time investment) and with 4x70ml color ink set at around 15-20€ , you can print hundreds of thesis. so do you still want to build a diy plotter at less than that cost? think again.

author: viperidae
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 28, 2019, 11:21:21 pm
content: Just buy a laser printer. I have a brother 3740 and it's still on the original toner, after 1170 pages.I reset the page counter after 1000 because the cartridges weren't really empty when it said to replace them

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 29, 2019, 12:43:01 am
content: I briefly had one of these waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay backhttps://www.ebay.ca/itm/COMMODORE-computer-vic-1520-color-colour-printer-plotter-vintage/184035375596?hash=item2ad95cf9ec:g:BAQAAOSwNoBdzLH0Although these must be dry as Mars by nowhttps://www.ebay.ca/itm/VINTAGE-COMMODORE-PRINTER-PENS-FOR-1520-COLOR-PLOTTER-LOT-OF-5-SETS/383271787539?hash=item593cc75c13:g:RsMAAOSwfVtd0dS1The plotter eventually fails when the tiny plastic gear on the motor shaft cracks. But it's fun to watch going, and it serves no real purpose since it plots on 4 inch wide calculator paper.

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 29, 2019, 01:18:47 am
content: It's also useful to note that the one-time market leader (?) in pen plotters, Hewlett Packard, long ago abandoned that approach in favor of ink jet "plotters". I actually had one of those, could print on E size media (!), and used enormous cartridges that are still widely available from HP and many third party suppliers.Pen plotting is cool to watch but like using a slide rule in the face of modern calculators. There's several good reasons nobody uses them anymore.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 29, 2019, 12:41:50 pm
content: Yep. True plotter mechanisms only survive as vinyl cutters.

author: austfox
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 29, 2019, 12:52:36 pm
content: Like others have said, if it’s a cost issue then either a laser printer or an Epson eco-tank is the way to go. I have both, however my daily printer is the eco-tank because I like the prints it produces.However, if you like the idea of a plotter and rather than reinventing the wheel, have a lookout for a 2nd hand HP7475A printer. There are adapters you can 3D print (or buy from eBay) to allow you to use Sharpies for the plotter pens. There are few videos on Youtube where you can see the Sharpies in action, eg:https://youtu.be/soS4-wyP3KI

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 29, 2019, 01:32:43 pm
content: Quote from: pixelsafoison on November 27, 2019, 03:47:11 pmDude, get a laser printer that can easily be refilled, without having to use reset chips or expensive reset stuff.There's cheap models like Brother HL-1222we or brother HL-L2312d which can be refilled with toner (about 10$ for ~1000 pages) after you install a reset gear that costs a few dollars (or you can buy an original toner for 50-100$ which you can then refill lots of times)However, the drum is usually rated only for about 10k pages, so you'd have to replace that, and that will also cost 50-100$.It's more efficient to pay a bit more, for example have a look at:Brother-HL-L5000D :https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-HL-L5000D-Printer-Connected-Printing/dp/B01C96C99C/It's 147 uk pounds (170 euro or 190$)Comes with a drum that's rated for 30K..50K pages (new genuine drum is ~150$)Comes with startup toner that's good for 2000 pages.There's:Standard Toner TN-3430 - Approx. 3,000 pages, (genuine one is ~75$)High Yield Toner TN-3480 - Approx. 8,000 pages (genuine one is ~125$)You can easily refill these toners, so you only need to buy one of these and then keep refilling it with toner that costs less than 10$ for 1000 pages.here's a video - remember you do this once every 3000 or 8000 pages so in your case maybe twice a year, taking 30m to 1h to refill won't be a big deal: