sd@sdchem.UUCP (Steve Dempsey) (09/06/86)
We are in the market for a new small plotter. Our requirements are: 1. 11" x 17" flatbed with sheet feeder, or 11" wide drum. 2. Self capping pens (minimum of 4). 3. RS232 interface. Send me your experiences, both good and bad, and I'll summarize for the net. Thanks in advance.
rdp@teddy.UUCP (Richard D. Pierce) (09/08/86)
In article <289@sdchema.sdchem.UUCP> sd@sdchem.UUCP (Steve Dempsey) writes: >We are in the market for a new small plotter. Our requirements are: > >1. 11" x 17" flatbed with sheet feeder, or 11" wide drum. >2. Self capping pens (minimum of 4). >3. RS232 interface. > >Send me your experiences, both good and bad, and I'll summarize for the net. >Thanks in advance. (I know he meant mail, but I am sort of an expert here, so I thought my reply would be of general interest.) I used to work for Applicon, and was their main plotter guru there. I had the opportunity to extensively evaluate a wide variety of plotters, including those from HP, Calcomp, Huoston Instruments, and so forth. The clear winner is HP. The HP 7550 does everything you need, has a very simple yet extremely powerful interface language (HP-GL), is exteremely reliable, has the best manufacturers support, the best documentation, generated the best looking plots of the like, and so on. The price may or may not be as good as the others, but having spent many hundreds of hours writing software for them all, and having to jury rig repairs on many of them to get them to work, the extra price for the HP was far and away worth it. By the way, the worst line of plotters I encountered was that from Calcomp. Crude interface languages, poor reliability, miserable documentation, what support from the manufacturer I could find was either ill-informed or down- right nasty. I can never recommend the use of Calcomp products to anyone. Dick Pierce
patch@nscpdc.UUCP (Pat Chewning) (09/10/86)
> In article <289@sdchema.sdchem.UUCP> sd@sdchem.UUCP (Steve Dempsey) writes: > >We are in the market for a new small plotter. Our requirements are: ----- He describes a plotter > In article <3127@teddy.UUCP>: > The clear winner is HP. ... ... ... > By the way, the worst line of plotters I encountered was that from Calcomp. I can second his comments. Be particularly wary of Calcomp's "HPGL" emulation package. It does NOT fully emulate an HP plotter. For instance, on our CAD system if we send text to the HP plotter, the zero "0" is plotted as a circle with a line through it. On the Calcomp with HPGL emulation the zero "0" is plotted as a circle followed by the line: "O/" Needless to say, this creates unreadable dimensions on a CAD drawing. Besides this software emulation problem, we have had numerous mechanical problems with pen alignment, etc. We have found it impossible to plot on mylar with the Calcomp. The worst problem is related to the pen alignment bracket. This appears to be about a $1.50 part that the pen passes through on its way to the paper. The inside diameter of the hole that the pen passes through is approx .157" , the pens are .156" . There is no easy way to adjust the location of the alignment bracket within .001" concentricity with the pen holder. The result is that oftentimes the pen never even touches the paper as it gets stuck in the alignment bracket. Final evaluation: Time wasted on Calcomp problems is more expensive than extra cost of HP plotter. pen