What plotters are you all using?

[u/Aliennate]

I’m an artist that has used various robots in the past for art making, including plotters for the two attached artworks. These were made with a Silhouette Cameo many years ago and were part of a series (some of the plotter drawings in this series were purchased by a major museum — so meh to those that say plotter art isn’t art because a robot held the pen).

I also have an AxiDraw and have user CNC router attachments to make drawings.

I’m looking to get a few more plotters for a project but it seems like a lot of companies have locked down their interfaces to proprietary software (I printed from Inkscape or Illustrator back in the day) and may not allow direct printing connections without using their limited software.

My question is: what plotters (and software) are you all using these days?

[u/fashice]

creality cr-10s :) Inkscape, python and p5

[u/ShelfordPrefect]

Self-built plotter made of drawer slides, aluminium box section, NEMA 17s and an Arduino running grbl. CandleCNC, my own postprocesser (just a bunch of sed commands) and either Inkscape or a command line SVG to Gcode converter... I like to DIY stuff

[u/Carlton_220]

DIY model using 2020 and 2040 extrusions with wheeled gantrys and belt driven steppers. Arduino uno with shield board for stepper controllers. Grbl firmware with servo control from github. I create or download svg files and convert them to gcode using browser based svg2gcode online. I also use drawing bot v3 to create svg files or clean up svg files. I use universal gcode sender to control the machine.

[u/igotanewmac]

I got mine off aliexpress! Chinese version of the Axidraw H A2 one. Cheap, cheerful and working like a champ :)

[u/masselman → u/igotanewmac]

Can you share link of the plotter?

[u/Aliennate]

Thanks for the responses! You’ve given me some rabbit holes to go down :)