Sharpie Printer attachment

[DrSteveBrule]

This is hella cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj701D6zrNI&feature=player_embedded

 

[Pat Whatley]

We can do the same thing with our Roland and Summa plotters. We have to wrap vinyl around the Sharpies so they're the same size as the blade holders but then they work perfectly.

 

[signswi]

You can build a "plotter" that draws with a sharpie out of lego mindstorms too, that's a fun project.

 

[MikePro]

wrap a sharpie with a couple of layers of masking tape and it fits into our mimaki plotter just fine on its own.

 

[J Hill Designs]

yeah i use a sharpie for making patterns

 

[OldPaint]

Those clients who want CHEAP PAPER BANNERS....this is what they get!!!!hahahahahahahahaha

 

[signswi]

By the way this is where the term plotter comes from in the first place -- this tech was developed for pens long before it was for blades.

 

[Tony McD]

Plotters used to come with little felt pens...I still have mine around here somewhere.

 

[TheSnowman]

wrap a sharpie with a couple of layers of masking tape and it fits into our mimaki plotter just fine on its own.

What mimaki cutter do you do that on? I'm trying to figure out how I could do that on mine. Mine doesn't seem big enough to hold anything but the pen.

 

[CheapVehicleWrap]

Mine has markers...ah ha! A way to finally make MY OWN custom toilets paper in house and save thousands a year. I bet I can get that cheap 1 ply stuff to survive the grit rollers. move the plotter to the printer take up real and wa-la! AND there's just gotta be a market for 65" toilet paper.

 

[jiarby]

man... that is about the hardest way in the world to print a job

 

[Bradster941]

I wonder what software they are using and how to make Flexi do the Fill In as opposed to just the cut lines.

 

[Bradster941]

'Ah, I guess a multi step in line would work.


.

 

[GAC05]

I think the neatest part of that video is the hand built wooden plotter.

wayne k
guam usa

 

[Mosh]

I used to do that with my old Gerber Sprint 3, in fact Gerber had a similar deal out for a while...this was back in like 1990 or so.....Easy way to make paper banners back then...15" tall.

 

[bob]

man... that is about the hardest way in the world to print a job

Back in the 1970's I wrote a ton of code to do exactly that with pen plotters. There was no such thing as a color printer. Hell, there weren't even any color monitors. If you wanted color output, you used a pen plotter.

Doing an object fill is simple, just a bit of simple algebra calculating vector intercepts and knowing the pen tip diameter.

With an 8 pen plotter, that's all the colors there were, we even did what passes for photo reproduction with some primitive dithering algorithms.

Monochromatic photo output was even simpler than filling objects, merely resolve the bitmap to match the pen diameter and then either pen up or pen down for each pixel. Contiguous similar pixels in the direction you were scanning the bitmap were rendered as a line, singleton pixels as a dot. You could scan the bitmap either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally depending on what you felt like doing.

It was slow and, looking back, it was silly, but back then it was the only game in town. Sort of like during the California gold rush in 1849 dirty laundry was shipped to Hawaii and shipped back clean. Or the Pony Express. You had to start somewhere with the tools you had at the time.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

That Is so cool! Those would have been interesting times for sure. There is also something noone mentioned. 100% guaranteed zero banding issues!

Back in the 1970's I wrote a ton of code to do exactly that with pen plotters. There was no such thing as a color printer. Hell, there weren't even any color monitors. If you wanted color output, you used a pen plotter.

Doing an object fill is simple, just a bit of simple algebra calculating vector intercepts and knowing the pen tip diameter.

With an 8 pen plotter, that's all the colors there were, we even did what passes for photo reproduction with some primitive dithering algorithms.

Monochromatic photo output was even simpler than filling objects, merely resolve the bitmap to match the pen diameter and then either pen up or pen down for each pixel. Contiguous similar pixels in the direction you were scanning the bitmap were rendered as a line, singleton pixels as a dot. You could scan the bitmap either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally depending on what you felt like doing.

It was slow and, looking back, it was silly, but back then it was the only game in town. Sort of like during the California gold rush in 1849 dirty laundry was shipped to Hawaii and shipped back clean. Or the Pony Express. You had to start somewhere with the tools you had at the time.

 

[John L]

I wonder what software they are using and how to make Flexi do the Fill In as opposed to just the cut lines.

In Flexi... Click the Advanced Tab in the Cut/Plot window. All the way at the bottom - Fill Plot. You can set your pen nib width and the angle that it draws the fill lines too.

We made bunches of paper banners for grocery stores like that many moons ago.

 

[slappy]

Those clients who want CHEAP PAPER BANNERS....this is what they get!!!!hahahahahahahahaha

LMFAO OP! That's great! That's exactly what i'm going to start offering to them!

 

[Stealth Ryder]

It thought it was cool...