Latest revision as of 22:04, 6 May 2012

On December 20, 2009, someone (who?) donated a beautiful HP DraftMaster I pen plotter (HP P/N 7595A).

There's a Flickr set of somebody else's DraftMaster for reference.

Our plotter:

spit something out to it: dd if=/somefile of=/dev/ttyUSB0 bs=1

Carousel setup[edit]

HPGL Software:

Wikipedia: Plotter, HPGL

Program that seems to work:

IN;
SC0,40,0,40;
SP7;
PU0,0;
PD100,0,100,100,0,100,0,0;
PU50,50;
CI25;

Settings:

Your program needs to use DOS line endings (\r\n)
Serial is 9600 8N1 on the PC side, plugged into the COMPUTER/MODEM port via a null modem cable
SERIAL:
- DATAFLOW: REMOTE, STANDALONE
- PARITY: 1
- BAUD: 9600
- HARDWIRE: OFF

Using Inkscape:

Load (or create) your vector graphic in Inkscape
Prepare the image for printing:
Scale the image (Inkscape mm units appear to work correctly)
Flip the image horizontally (for some reason, the plotter is printing it backwards)
Select 'save as', then 'HP Graphics Language'.
Open this file in a text editor, and copy the text
Paste the file into your terminal program, configured as above (CoolTerm in OS/X or Minicom in Linux)
Enjoy your plot!

Example:

@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 * [http://www.inkscape.org/ Inkscape], a vector drawing program, can export HPGL.
 * [http://sk1project.org/modules.php?name=Products&product=uniconvertor Uniconvertor] may be able to output HPGL.
-* [http://www.gnu.org/software/hp2xx/]
+* [http://www.gnu.org/software/hp2xx/ hp2xx], a hpgl to jpg converter for sanity checking.
-Pens:
 * [http://www.draftingsteals.com/catalog-plotters---plotter-supplies-plotter-pens-rapidoplot-disposable-6820-series-e-style-plotter-p.html draftingsteals.com]
 * [http://www.westnc.com/hp-plotter-pens.html wncsupply.com]