Gena's Plotter thread

    Quote from wayne5

    Another thing to think about. The drive systems, how you move the media, are patented....mostly. You may have to get a license.

    I'll look into that. I have an idea on how I want to make my own. I think some of these designs are 40 years old, so I think the patents would be gone by now,


    But really it's just a drum with sprockets on it that pull the material. I'll take some pictures today of what I'm taking about and post them here.

    You should really consider a laser cutter. Here's a video showing a cutter, cutting 1/4 inch acrylic.

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    This is interesting. You need to watch lots of You tubes, even if you think it not what you are looking for. If you find just one thing that helps, it is worth it.


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    You most likely have some stepper motors for the old Gerber unit. That's a good place to start.

    The specs. of the motor will tell you what kind of stepper driver board you will need. If you have schematics of the old unit you may find that the steppers are driven with discrete components. That may help. You do your research. You gather parts and build partial prototypes, like a single motor with a driver.

    Quote from wayne5

    You should really consider a laser cutter. Here's a video showing a cutter, cutting 1/4 inch acrylic.

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    It has to be a rubber stencil cutter.

    "It has to be a rubber stencil cutter." Doesn't matter. You need to build up your knowledge base about all these things. An LED style laser would slice through that material without having to move. That's a big advantage. It may not be practical because of carbonization but that may not be an issue....you just don't know. You are doing research.


    Here's something to consider. You could buy this cheep kit and build something that will build your knowledge base and be fun at the same time.


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    I do know about laser cutters. I've installed several of them.


    What I'm talking about has a hug market for exactly what we do. No one else would have it, since Gerber stopped making the one that was considered industry standard.


    So I know the market for exactly what this needs to be. It will only do one job and it will be a tank. As simple and solid as I can make it.

    It cannot be a flatbed. It has to be on a drum and hold a roll of material. Most people don't have room for a flatbed, but we do sell on that my uncle designed and made.


    A laser is much more complicated to use. Very much more. You need to know the materials and match the laser output and speed. They also let off gases and needs to be ventilated.


    I'll try to get pictures or video over the next day and show you the machine I want to emulate.

    This is a 15-inch version of what I want to make.



    The 30-inch version is no longer made but they still make this one.


    The drum is called a platin. So these are the industry standard. Because they have sprockets and they are designed to cut rubber. Any other kind of feed, like friction feed which is from grit rollers and pinch wheels, will not work with rubber because the rubber will move and steer around. They have to be locked down with sprockets. That's why the sprockets are on the ends of the drums.


    The cutting surface does not have to be on a drum though. It could be on a cut strip. But these are the best that have been made. They're built like tanks. 30 and 40-year-old designs. Just rock solid.


    Here's a picture of a 30-in model. This is an older model. But it's the same basic idea. The same big drum with sprockets.


    The pictures help a lot. The 15" version looks like it has a DB25 connector with an RS-232 serial port. The platin on the 15" looks a lot smaller than the 30". How often do you have to replace the platin?


    I think I see a lead screw to move the cutter head back and forth. Is the LS driven directly by a stepper or does it have some kind of gearing system?

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    This is an expensive part if you have to have it made. You can use an off the shelf part as long as it's the same length or longer. You can make your unit longer by an inch or two and just to get a standard part. The big silver rod like guides are off the shelf and gliding guide parts are available, but you will have to adapt them for your application. You can have the cutter parts 3d printed if you can make a mechanical drawing of what you want.


    Some of the parts are going to be too expensive to make/buy one at a time. You will have to have some cash to buy them in hundreds to get a good price. Inventory is a never ending battle. If you don't stock certain parts, you may need them and find they have a 6 month lead time.


    It's just a process of You divide the project into little projects and figure them out, one at a time.


    Do you have schematics of the controller board? Or a picture that shows the processor part number? If it's that old, it could be 8088 or a Z80. It also could have an EEPROM with firmware that could be disassembled, and a source file could be generated so you could rewrite the whole thing to avoid copyright problems and places where you would want to change the code. Or just use it as a pattern to compare to so you know things like how many HPGL instructions it has implemented.


    HP-GL Reference Guide

    Wow that's great information Wayne!


    The one with the worm gear is an older model and they replace that warm gear with a belt drive. It doesn't need to be that complicated.


    These machines are made super well. Really well made. What I would want to do is emulate the best parts of these machines. Just simple mechanical machine with as little electronics as possible.


    Newer machines almost all you swivel blades and don't need to rotate tangently like these do. The downside is that they use a solenoid type of blade head that is software driven for pressure and everything else. I don't like that. These machines use a mechanical spring lever that adjusts the blade pressure. There's nothing to break, other than a spring and these don't break. With the newer type of solenoid heads the ribbon cables break and the solenoids wear out. I don't like any of that.


    So I pretty much know exactly what I want to build.


    Your links are super helpful! You're knowledge is very much appreciated! I'll probably need to call you again when I get down to this to figure out the software.


    Yeah I realize that I'm going to need to buy off the shelf stuff for a lot of this. We can make some of the stuff though. With a CNC machine or whatever. There's a lot of resources available around me here too. People that can manufacture gears and all kinds of things.


    But I want to get off the shelf stuff that is common to other machines possibly.


    I think the approach I've decided on is to build the physical frame and mechanical parts. Make a prototype and then add the electronics and gearing, or pulleys or whatever to match what it needs to be to make whatever I built work.


    I'm excited about this though. My uncle built a flatbed plotter that's still being sold. He was a genius though.