tobiastoft

You can make your own adapters depending on the pen you want to put in it. I've made some out of dried out HP pens that I cut the ends off and jammed a Sharpie into. I've seen nicer 3d printed adapters on eBay and Thingiverse as well. When using a heavier pen like a Sharpie, you might want to set the plotter's speed a little lower to avoid knocking the pen loose when it accelerates.

Yeah, fortunately pens are relatively easy to find on Amazon, eBay, and a few online stores (just Google 'HP Plotter Pens'). My Roland and HP plotters use the same type of pens, btw.

All USB-Serial cables and adapters I’ve used so far have worked (including Arduinos!), but you might need a DB-9 to DB-25 null modem to physically connect your adapter to the plotter. Biggest thing to watch out for is to make sure you get an RS-232/Serial version of the plotter and not an HPIB/GPIB version. The easiest way to check is to look for a DB-25 connector on the back of the plotter instead of a Centronics-style connector (looks a bit beefier).

EDIT: Btw, some plotters (like the HP 7550A) will have both types of connectors on the back. In that case you’re good!

I should, but I'm frankly too lazy to get it done! I've really enjoyed browsing your post history — awesome work!

I tried putting a calligraphy pen in my plotter and it was definitely rough on the nib because of the angle. With continuous line drawing it would probably be ok, but too much up/down movement might get messy. Still fun to watch though! Here's a short video of it in action: https://www.instagram.com/p/BNCxyfLBh8_/

Can't believe my old post got picked up! If anyone's looking to get a plotter I would still highly recommend an old HP 7475A as a gateway drug — they're relatively cheap, not too big (the size of a large-ish inkjet printer) and incredibly well made. I've had a lot of fun using the Geomerative library for Processing.org to play around with my plotters, but really anything goes as long as you can access your serial port and don't mind reading the plotter's manual. I generally save the HPGL output to a text file and then use a small utility app I've written to send it to the plotter. Sometimes I'll check the output in Cenon.app before wasting any paper or ink.