CoosBayLumber
Posts: 3449
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Joined: 1/20/2002
Last Login: 2/9/2010
From: San Bernardino Calif
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Bought a plotter and a large format digitizer tablet about ten years ago, and never regretted it.
It is more productive to do a project at home, undisturbed and safe from someone wanting to reformat the way the office does things or being subject to disk errors or wrong format. The big advantage of having one at home is not wasting your time, gasoline, dollars and effort just to discover you made a simple sizing or position error. I do not desire to drive the ten miles round trip to a plotting agency, wait the 1/2 hour, and they find they changed their plotting parameters so now your design not only doesn't fit, but looks like junk. So that is, $3 in fuel, $5 for the plot, no charge on the standby time, and after your 25th trip, you are ready to do it at home. If you ar Mr. Perfect, and never make a mistake or revision, then buying one for home is not a part of the equation.
You first off have to begin by looking at what is compatible with your system and your needs. If you are only doing little rubber powered A/C, then one of the little H-P 7500 small format plotters will work. These hold paper up to 11 by 17, are not too fast, but they are like fleas on the back of a dog as they are everywhere and go for about $25 each.
However, if you really want to do some plotting of large size A/C, you need a real plotter. 24 inch wide format if you are doing A/C up to 36 inch wingspan, and 36 inch wide plotter for larger. These being the two most popular widths, and will generally handle lengths of about 60 inch or 96 inch with a special format. Calcomp, H-P, DMP, Ioline, Versatec are about the only serviceable plotters around today. Go to the Lorand web site and service information or set-up information can be found for no $$$. I use Autocad, and they have a K-boodle of drivers available for plotters, but I do not know what is available for other CAD systems or graphic systems.
Used inkjet plotters begin in the thousands $$$. Most pen plotters go for under $500 with all equipment and work on Vector language. Look into your system documentation to see what pen plotters are compatible as they are the most affordable. Eventially you are going to want to develop some laser cut parts, you have to work in vector language as that converts over to CNC G-Code language most accurately.
A jet plotter/printer like the agencies use are fast, but also a lot more expensive and use a different language. In Autocad and most small format CAD systems, you can send the drawing to a second small sized desktop jet printer for small parts. In setting up for a pen plotter, you will need some liquid ink pens and a bunch of ball point or roller ball pens. I do large sized model A/C plans with three or four views, details with instructional text and the ball pens will have the plot done in less than ten minutes. The final liquid ink plot will take about 5 times longer. The Calcomp is by all accounts the fastest plotter, and DMP being the slowest of the above noted. The Calcomp 10xx through 40xx, H-P 75xx and DMP-60 plotters are still out there working away, and salesmen, technitians, and consumables still around at 10-20 years after being obsolete.
For your thought, two years back, I had a request to try out two plotters then up for auction on eBay in the Los Angeles area. One for $200 and the other for $1. I loaded up Autocad software on a borrowed laptop computer and drove to each vendor. Brought along the set-up instructions obtained from websites, a long extension cord, and a I/O 9 pin cable. The $200 did not work at all, and the $1 worked fine. Was only bidder on the $1 plotter as the owner did not know how to run a plot.
Wm.
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