Hi, I’m looking to buy a small axidraw before I go on a trip mid-May. The new bantam models won’t be shipping until the 13th. Is anybody planning on upgrading and wants to sell their current plotter? I can buy in person in SF Bay Area or possibly Cambridge, MA.

Thought this might be of interest. Created circa 1978 at Syracuse University using PSplat - a graphics language running in APL. Plotted on CalComp plotter. Reprinted from university newspaper.

Vintage plot circa 1978

I interviewed Pablo Azócar (pavlovpulus on Instagram) for my newsletter. He's a pen plotting artist based out of Chile and has a pretty interesting story.

He offered a lot of good insights for other up & coming artists that were looking for some art business tips.

Check it out if you guys would like: staysketchy.com

Hi, I’m interested in a plotter for handwriting. My daughter has to do a lot of handwriting for work but she has a visual impairment that makes hand written tasks take a very long time. In my casual google searches the plotting world seems a bit complex, and I’m not sure I’m technical enough to figure it all out lol. But what I would love to know is if there’s the ability for a beginner to use one for handwriting and if there’s a way to program it so the handwriting looks natural and imperfect…

The beast might've been from Japan, not sure. Googly brings up nothing even close. Let me describe this elaborate and pricey 4-pen plotter: The main bed 3' x 6' or LARGER, perforated with a matrix of tiny holes, like an air-hockey table, only reverse-flow, i.e. a vacuum to hold the paper down, nothing spectacular by itself.

The real magic was contained in an equal-sized platform suspended at the 4 corners, about 10-12" above (and parallel to) the paper bed. The underside of this "bed", facing the paper, also had a matrix of "pores", blowing OUT/down--this created an air-bearing for the 4-pen chuck, which was held up by electro-magnets in the overhead platform. It was basically a 2D linear motor, i.e. the chuck drew lines by "chasing" a moving magnetic field in the upper bed, whilst dragging a pen across the paper on the lower bed. It had an accuracy of better than 1/20th of an inch. One of the built-in tests would draw a line near the entire perimeter of the billiards table sized paper, and meet up with its origin.

This upside-down hockey puck/chuck had one clear air hose running out to it from the base platform, along with a multi-wire cable. IIRC, the cable carried the signal which selected the pen #/color, while the hose-provided air pressure forced the selected pen down against the paper; a spring retracted the pen when the air pressure was removed. There was a "parking" spot in one corner, don't remember if there was an actual mechanical support there... probably was, as I can't imagine the chuck would just fall over and crash on the paper during a power outage.

This thing was surprisingly FAST and LOUD! Despite no conventional X-Y motors and gears, when it did a pen-up full-length run, there was significant air-turbulence whine, plus I don't know what else--serious decibels!

We used it to plot integrated circuit (IC) layers for human inspection, before committing to photo-lithography glass "masks". Not sure how well this plotter could render smooth complex curves, as CMOS digital IC gates and I/O pads of the day were mostly orthogonal shapes, with a smattering of 45-degree traces, so we weren't really pushing its "artistic" potential. NOT sketching up any zowie concept cars... durn.

Anyhoo, is this ringing a proverbial bell for anyone? >pondering emoji here< ;')

When I plot some line art, I've noticed that the pen goes over the same line twice -- which makes me wonder if it's doing the thing with text where it draws the outline. In this case, the outline of the line so it goes over it twice.

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Is there a quick fix for this?

Hi -- looking for some help.

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Recently purchased iDraw pen plotter, and I've moved the board over a bit and recrewed (see photo with corners circled).

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It's able to plot an A4 image just fine, but A3 isn't working for some reason.

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Please see the error:

Warning (bounds): AxiDraw movement was limited by its

physical range of motion. If everything else looks

correct, there may be an issue with the document size,

or the wrong model of AxiDraw may be selected.

Please contact technical support if you need assistance.

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https://preview.redd.it/vi0qjd9vjvvc1.png?width=1328&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d7364da0f410ef93cc45828ead68ba80d72e03b

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https://preview.redd.it/6puot2ayjvvc1.png?width=362&format=png&auto=webp&s=c34d73c6515d7c37137373b0e1e3d297b8bf5af2

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I've ensured that on Inkscape the doc properties are set to A3.

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Any ideas of a solution?

I’m selling my Axidraw V3 (based in the Uk).

Send me a private message if your interested and we can discuss price/shipping

Is there a way for me to know the estimate of how many minutes/hrs does plotting do when I feed a paper? like at least I will not eyeball the the timer for me

If there is, I would like to know how or where will I see it in my Signmaster cut 3.5v application?
Also, if thats not your app, what app does have that option?

I got a iDraw H version, and I can open Inkscape and draw something, then open the iDraw Extension and I can plot it by clicking "Apply".

Now I'm wondering how can I get the gcode Inkscape is sending to the plotter, so I can run it via grblhud in the command line?

If I use the gcodetools extension and try to run that gcode, the plotter starts slamming into itself.

Recently purchased the iDraw 2.0.

Is there anyway to safely stop the machine while it’s running? Besides turning it off by the switch?

Had a few problems where I forgot to format it correctly and it’s made a bit of a mess.

If I try to exit Inkscape it doesn’t like that either