General > General Technical Chat
Roland "DXG-1100" pen plotter
<< < (5/8) > >>
tautech:
Thanks GeoffS.
We will see who's "listening" first and then probably do that.
Any suggestion as to the best board to post on for this hijack?
anachrocomputer:
To go back to the original question, about Roland plotters and pens, I have modified old dried-up HP plotter pens for use in my Roland DXY-990. I also got the plotter from FreeCycle, in Bristol. My photos of drilling and modifying pens are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anachrocomputer/sets/72157624783555539/

I use rollerball pens for fine lines (Pilot V-Ball) and felt pens for wider lines (Staedtler Triplus). I get them from Cult Pens: http://www.cultpens.com/

I've taken the DXY-990 to a few UK Maker Faires (Bristol, Derby, Brighton, Newcastle), where it was a popular exhibit. At Bristol Hackspace, we also have a much bigger Roland DPX-3300. The DPX-3300 is A1 size, whereas the DXY-990 is A3. As for manuals, Roland UK have been very helpful and e-mailed me PDF copies once I'd sent them the serial number of the plotters. Not bad for a 25-year-old product! Photos of the big plotter are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anachrocomputer/sets/72157633082493407
mikeselectricstuff:
Many years ago I used a Roland A3 plotter do to 2x PCB artwork, in the days when PCB manufacturers would accept film artwork.
I was using PCB software I'd written, and this used a few tricks to optimise the speed. Basically it boiled down to "When the pen goes up, go to the nearest point which you've not drawn yet". And of course draw everything with one pen before changing to another.
It ought to be feasible to to a generic HPGL optimiser to do this - all you need is enough memory to hold enough commands to have a good chance of finding nearby items to do next. Just fill the buffer, throw stuff out as it's drawn and keep it full to give the mest search space for nearby objects.
You probably could do some super-clever travelling-Salesman type optimisation, but the difference between no optimisiation and a simple scheme is so big that any addiitonal cleverness will be diminishing returns.
 
JoeyP:
A few decades ago, I used a Roland DXY-990 to plot artwork directly onto PCBs with great success. Even did a small production run of a commercial product that way. Here's a few things I learned:

Sharpies of that era worked well for etchant resist, but it seems they've changed their formula since then. Not sure if newer ones will work as well, because the newer ink seems much less durable. It's now easily washed off with simple alcohol, but it took something stronger back in those days.

I found that certain brands, and interestingly, certain colors of stock plotter pens worked better than Sharpies. The best were Staedtler fiber-tip. The red ink was the most durable resist, but left a broader stroke. The black ink did a finer stroke, but I had to be very careful during the etching process because it was much less durable.

I found that it's best to "rough up" the bare copper. I used fine steel-wool for that, but of course it left oil behind, so had to clean the copper thoroughly with acetone or alcohol before plotting.

In case you didn't notice it, the height of the plotter pens is adjustable. Loosen the screws of the holder and adjust up to give more clearance for PCB.
flolic:
I have this beast collecting dust. Maybe I will try to direct print some PCBs...



Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod