Plotter

For other uses, see Plot.

Inkjet plotter

A plotter is a vector graphics printing device that connects to a computer.

Plotters print their output by moving a pen across the surface of a piece of paper. This means that plotters are restricted to line art, rather than raster graphics as with other printers. They can draw complex line art, including text, but do so very slowly because of the mechanical movement of the pens. (Plotters are incapable of creating a solid region of color; but can hatch an area by drawing a number of close, regular lines.) When computer memory was very expensive, and processor power was very slow, this was often the fastest way to produce color high-resolution vector-based artwork, or very large drawings efficiently.

Traditionally, printers are primarily for printing text. This makes it fairly easy to control, simply sending the text to the printer is usually enough to generate a page of output. This is not the case of the line art on a plotter, where a number of printer control languages were created to send the more detailed information like "draw a line from here to here". The two common ASCII based plotter control languages are Hewlett Packard's HPGL or Houston Instruments DMPL with commands such as "PA 3000, 2000; PD".

Programmers in FORTRAN or BASIC generally did not program these directly, but used software packages such as the Calcomp library, or device independent graphics packages such as Hewlett-Packard's AGL libraries or BASIC extensions or high end packages such as DISSPLA. These would establish scaling factors from world coordinates to device coordinates, and translating to the low level device commands. In HP 9830 BASIC, it was actually simpler to write a plotting program than today with C#.NET. For example to plot X*X, the program would be

10 SCALE -1,1,1,1
20 FOR X =-1 to 1 STEP 0.1
30 PLOT X, X*X
40 NEXT X
50 PEN
60 END

Early plotters (e.g. the Calcomp 565 of 1959) worked by placing the paper over a roller which moved the paper back and forth for X motion, while the pen moved back and forth on a single arm for Y motion. Another approach (e.g. Computervision's Interact I) involved attaching ball-point pens to drafting pantographs and driving the machines with motors controlled by the computer. This had the disadvantage of being somewhat slow to move, as well as requiring floor space equal to the size of the paper, but could double as a digitizer. A later change was the addition of an electrically controlled clamp to hold the pens, which allowed them to be changed and thus create multi-colored output.

Hewlett Packard and Tektronix created desk-sized flatbed plotters in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, the small and lightweight HP 7470 used an innovative "grit wheel" mechanism which moved only the paper. Modern desktop scanners use a somewhat similar arrangement. These smaller "home-use" plotters became popular for desktop business graphics, but their low speed meant they were not useful for general printing purposes, and another conventional printer would be required for those jobs. One category introduced by Hewlett Packard's MultiPlot for the HP 2647 was the "word chart" which used the plotter to draw large letters on a transparency. This was the forerunner of the modern Powerpoint chart. With the widespread availability of high-resolution inkjet and laser printers, inexpensive memory and computers fast enough to rasterize color images, pen plotters have all but disappeared.

Plotters were also used in the Create-A-Card kiosks that were available for a while in the greeting card area of supermarkets that used the HP 7475 6 pen plotter.

Plotters are used primarily in technical drawing and CAD applications, where they have the advantage of working on very large paper sizes while maintaining high resolution. Another use has been found by replacing the pen with a cutter, and in this form plotters can be found in many garment and sign shops.

If a plotter is commanded to use different colors it has to replace the pen and select the wanted color.

A niche application of plotters is in creating tactile images for visually handicapped people on special thermal cell paper.

Note that in many of today's environments, plotters in the traditional sense have been supplanted with (and, in many cases, obsoleted by) large-format inkjet printers and laser printers. Such printers are often still known as plotters, even though they are raster devices rather than pen based plotters by the definition of this article.

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A vinyl sign cutter is used by professional poster and billboard sign-making businesses to produce brilliant weather-resistant signs, posters, and billboards using colorful rolls of adhesive-backed vinyl film that have a removable paper backing material. The vinyl can also be applied to car bodies and windows for large, bright company advertising.

Generally the hardware is identical to a traditional plotter except that the ink pen is replaced by a very sharp knife edge that is use to score the surface of the film to cut out each shape, and the plotter may have a pressure control to adjust how hard the knife presses down into the vinyl film. The vinyl knife may be shaped like a normal pen and can be mounted on ball-bearings so the knife edge rotates to always face the correct direction as the plotter head moves.

Once the film has been scored, the cut-out pieces are peeled off the backing paper and carefully assembled by hand to form the final image. A heat gun may be used to melt/bond the vinyl pieces to the signage. Unused sections of film are rolled up and saved for later use.

The colors available are generally unlimited but requires a large collection of separate rolls of each color needed. To prevent creasing of the film, it is typically stored in rolls about 3 to 4 inches in diameter, and the typical vinyl film roll widths are 18-inch and 36-inch. It is common for a company with a vinyl sign cutting service to have an entire room filled with rolls of colorful film supplies for their signage customers.