What good is an HP plotter?

[Garth Wilson]

(06-05-2018 07:42 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  

(06-05-2018 06:46 PM)Garth Wilson Wrote:  At the job where I saw the charts being made constantly from vector network analyzers...

In the days when I used a vector network analyser (1989-92) plotters were already a thing of the past. We had laser printers then which would print the chart in a few seconds and for the important stuff (presentations!) a color-sublimation printer which was able to print beautiful A3 sized images on paper or transparency within a few minutes. Very expensive and an incredible waste of plastic foil.

At the place of work where a couple of the engineers were always using the plotters to make the charts from vector network analyzers, it was 1984-5. I don't know if laser printers existed yet, but although we had about 100,000 of equipment per engineer in the lab, the only printers we had were still dot-matrix-impact, and much slower than the ones that were out just a few years later. We do have a color laser printer at home, and we've had a couple of inkjet printers, and they have been constant trouble and very expensive to feed and maintain. A real pain. They also couldn't do B size (11x17") like the 7475 can. I still use an old dot-matrix impact printer for program listing where I want fanfold paper with no page breaks, and it has been trouble-free.

Quote:But you are right, for pure line charts the HP felt tip pens last very long. But only if you take them out of the plotter after use and put the caps back on - the spring loaded caps inside the plotter don't seal them properly!

That makes sense.

In the later 1990's, we had a plotter that we used for D (24"x36") and E-size (36"x48") drawings, which used mechanical-pencil lead. It kept feeding the lead to the proper length, and sensed when there wasn't enough left, and it disposed of the short piece and picked up the next piece, automatically. The lead of course never dries out, nor does it skip if you go too fast, nor does it soak into the paper if it's left down too long.