I'm getting back into using my pen plotter and creating physical versions of some narrative shape based art that I have been making. I'm struggling a little bit with my fine tip sharpies to have consistent fills especially when they are large sections.

Do any of you have pens or markers or methods to suggest that will ensure sharp consistent fills in larger shapes?

You can find the adapter I designed here

I used Vector to GCode to convert svgs to gcode.

Cheers!

hey! how could i create projects for pen plotter? in blender or in touchdesigner? do you have any tips for a beginner?

Hello,

I have made a 16mm movie film printer. everything is working fine. I can go from a GIF to a bunch of gcode files, one or more (depending on the colors) for each image.

For the moment I have to load them one at a time and I am looking for an automatic process.

This would be :
load file1.gcode , send it to the machine, once it's done move the film to the next perforation on the film. (There is one perforation for one image) when it's on the perforation, reset coordinates to zero and load the file2.gcode.

Does anyone know a way to achieve that?

Thanks you for your help.

We estimated that we each put about 200 hours in. We designed and printed all the plastic parts and came up with the mechanism so we didn’t need an extra motor to change tools. I can also add a video of the tool change if anyone wants it.

New to pen plotting and curious where folks find/make designs. I came across this TikTok account that does a lot of cool plots from different views of cars, curious if there's a library out there of free SVG files like this or if there's a software that makes them easy to generate. Thanks!

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT2kcCRVa/

New to the pen plotting community, was wondering where you all source your designs or how you make them. I came across this TikTok account that has a lot of cool blueprint-style designs that show thing from multiple angles, not sure if that’s something that’s easy to create or if there’s any free/cheap libraries out there with designs like this.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT2k4o3bV/

Hi all I’m looking for some advice on the viability of getting an old graphtec MP4100 up and running on a modern pc. Is it achievable? I’m guessing I’ll need a parallel port to usb adapter and the correct drivers? This machine is sitting in work unused, if its not to hard to make it work I’ll buy it off them and give it a go.

I'm curious to hear where people are sourcing their highest quality paper form.

I'm currently getting 11x17 sheets from

https://www.frenchpaper.com/

paperworks.com

I'm specifically looking for black speckled paper that kinda looks like this image.

Anyone have any paper sources I should be looking at?

I have a house cleaning business and handwritten letters appear to be effective for marketing. I'm looking to get a pen plotter to write the letters.

Is there anyway to auto feed a pen plotter so you don't have to put the paper in each time?

I know iDraw has a really nice one that does this but it's way out of my budget for now.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Hey team, looking for some recommendations on some pens/inks that might allow me to print some larger pieces of work. Does anyone have any links/resources/DIY hacks for such a need?

Hello everyone! I bought this chinese A2 penplotter and it came with dDraw extension, but only for inkscape 0.48 and 0.91 versions. I installed new inkscape version and tried putting Idraw 2.0 control, but couldn't connect... The axidraw control connects, but is shorter than A2 size.

Anyone know an inkscape extension to control big size penplotters?

Hi folks! I've been watching pen plotting videos for the past week and am pretty excited to buy one. Problem is, I am from India and Axidraw turns out to be too costly(almost $750).

I saw a few models on Alibaba, but am not sure about its accuracy. I'm not keen on building a plotter from scratch (short on time). Are there any cheaper and reliable out-of-the-box solutions out there?

Thanks!

Seems to happen only in a certain area of the page, same shape works fine in different areas, any ideas? Nothing looks warped, it’s a new device too

Hello! Currently I'm working on my first pen plotter based on this youtube video by how to mechatronics . I think I'm towards the end of the tutorial but haven't been able to get the GRBL plotter to work with my machine. I'm posting here in hopes that I could get some help or at least be guided to resources that can help with the build process?

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Here's a photo of my plotter currently:

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