Plotters

Plotters are used mainly for displaying graphic information - drawings, diagrams, diagrams, etc. The main advantage of plotters is that they are designed to produce images on large format paper, e.g., A1. Plotters are divided into two large classes: vector and raster.

Plotters, or plotters, are used mainly for displaying graphic information - drawings, diagrams, diagrams, etc

Vector plotters the writing unit moves relative to the paper at once vertically and horizontally, drawing continuous curves on paper in any direction. Raster plotters the writing unit is moved relative to the paper in only one direction, and the image is formed row by row from the sequence of points. Vector plotters use a node for drawing, which is called pen. As a pen, feathers are used with inks, fibreboards and plastic rods (felt-tip pens), pencil slips and crayons or single-reusable and ball-bearing ball assemblies. Fountain plotters provide high quality of both monochrome and color images, but have low speed of work. Gradually, pen and ball knots of plotters are replaced by jet assemblies, which are similar to jet assemblies printers. To obtain a very high print quality, electrostatic plotters use special paper on which a potential electrostatic image relief is created. On paper, a layer of dye is deposited, deposited only on the relief. Bitmap plotters can have an inkjet or laser writing site. Their main difference from printers with a similar principle of operation is the width of the image being processed. The variety of existing types of plotters and their high cost requires careful analysis when choosing a plotter. It is necessary to take into account such parameters as image quality, the possibility of using the color palette, productivity, operating costs expressed in the cost of one copy of the resulting image.

Communication with the computer, plotters are usually implemented through serial, parallel, SCSI interface and Ethernet (in the latter case, no connection to a specific computer is required, the plotter has its own IP address and, being included, is accessible to all machines in the local network). Some models of plotters are equipped with built-in buffer (1 MB or more).

The first plotters (for example Calcomp 565 from 1959) worked on the principle of paper movement by means of a roller, thus providing a coordinate X, and Y was provided by the movement of the pen. Another approach was a modernized pantograph, controlled by a computer and having a ball pen as a drawing element. The drawback of this method was that it required a space corresponding to the area to be delineated. But the advantage of this method, stemming from its lack, is the easily increased accuracy of the positioning of the pen and, accordingly, the accuracy of the drawing itself, applied to the paper. Later this device was supplemented with a special cassette holder, which could be arranged with feathers of different thickness and color.

The market for inkjet engineering plotters is dominated by Hewlett-Packard devices. Canon, Epson, Encad are also quite widely represented. The main producers of laser engineering equipment are KIP, Ricoh, Oce, Xerox, which in total occupy more than 90% of the market.

Tools