jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) (09/07/87)
I have just heard that someone at MIT has constructed a 36' by 44' plotter for making large murals. I would like to get in touch with them. John Nagle 415-856-0767
lindsay@k.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay) (09/10/87)
In article <17173@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) writes: > I have just heard that someone at MIT has constructed a 36' by 44' >plotter for making large murals. The ultimate pen plotter would be a "turtle" robot, with high precision navigation. One would put several beacons nearby - ultrasonic, radio, laser, whatever - and as long as the robot could determine its position to within a line width, you have a "plotter" of practically unlimited size. It might even be cheap, since it would depend more on electronic precision than on mechanical precision. A simpler and smaller one would use a (relatively) trivial imaging system, and look down. A very large light table is just a matter of hiring a carpenter and an electrician (or a student). Large plastic sheets can be purchased that are printed with grid lines, and that have low thermal creep (etc). The navigation software now merely counts grid transitions. Of course, a pen plotter may not be what the world is waiting for. -- Don lindsay@k.gp.cs.cmu.edu CMU Computer Science
berger@datacube.UUCP (09/15/87)
There is a GIANT plotter at MIT. It was built by people at the Visual Language Workshop several years ago. The name of the professor has suddenly escaped me. It is GIGANTIC. I forget the specs but it was made for doing LARGE billboards. It had something like a 5 nozzle airbrush head so it could do color. Its input was driven by a Grinell Frame Buffer so you could "display" almost any image onto the plotter. Much of the research was in inks/paints that could be easily controlled and mixed by the nozzles. Last I saw it (a few years ago) it was in a large MIT warehouse in Cambridge...
bc@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (bill coderre) (09/16/87)
Ron MacNeil of the VLW made the plotter in question. It worked by having a cart drive on a rail, with a set of airbrush nozzles riding up and down on another rail carried by the cart. Ron was talking billboard-sized output with fairly small (inch or so) pixel diameter. Ron's address is ronmac@media-lab.media.mit.edu (seismo knows about us, too). The project is currently not being worked on.......................bc
aln@mrmarx.UUCP (Amanda Nash) (09/29/87)
I don't know about the plotter itself, but I think the woman in charge of the _Visible_ Language Workshop's name is Muriel Cooper. Or something like that. I'm sure if you called the Media Lab you could find out.