Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff

A4-sized pen plotter

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Ice-Tea:
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.

ebclr:
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 Printer





EcoTank ET-4760

IDEngineer:
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 pm ---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 ...
--- End quote ---

This 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.

Mechatrommer:

--- Quote from: pixelsafoison on November 26, 2019, 10:22:18 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---
yes 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 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---
to put it bluntly, you are doing something wrong. a ecotank printer like https://www.kamera-express.be/product/12220324 is 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.

viperidae:
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

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