A plotter can be made independently - there would be a desire and enough parts from old printers and scanners at hand. A flatbed plotter is a two-coordinate table over which the head is moved with a writing instrument attached to it.
It is necessary
bipolar stepper motors, guides of different lengths, carriages, power supply
Instructions
Step 1
Experience suggests that you can use guides from old printers to create a XY table. The most difficult part of the mechanical design of a plotter is the device that moves the pen. One way is to adapt a small servo to push the short side of the arm. A felt-tip pen is attached to the long side of the lever. When the servo is in the up position, the spring pushes downward. The pen always rises to the same height, and descends as much as the paper or other object on which the application is made, allows.
Step 2
Stepper motors are used to control the pen, which can also be removed from the disassembled printer. However, they only move the pen back and forth. For step-by-step control of the head, a microcontroller is needed, which will decode the software commands and turn them into commands for the stepper motor.
Step 3
Now about the software: the HPGL language is used to control the unit. A list of the most frequently used commands can be found on open resources on the Internet. You can use the resulting unit to create drawings of printed circuit boards and transfer to paper any drawings converted from PostScript.
Step 4
To ensure the operation of two stepper motors, a power supply with a power of + 5V and 1A 24V is suitable. It can also be taken from a disassembled printer. If you replace the pen in the carriage with a 300 mW laser, you can use a homemade flatbed plotter for cutting. The power of such a laser is sufficient for burning wood or cutting thin films.
