Wireless Plotter

If you are talking wireless from a lap top to another computer connected to the device, yes I am doing it! If you are talking directly wireless to the plotter I don't know how this would be done!

 

Wireless

The issue with wireless vs wired is the way information is sent or packets.
With a wired connection (Parallel, usb, or serial), the packet opens, all the information is sent, the the packet is closed. The plotter see's 1 job and it has all the information.
With a wireless connection, the first packet opens, part of the information is sent, first packet is closed, then the second packet opens, a little more info is sent, the second packet is close, so on and so on. Any given job may have 30 to 40 packets to complete one job. But the plotter see's the first packet as the complete job when there really isn't enough information to do anything with it.
You would have to have one of two things to make this work:
1. A Radio Frequency (RF) connection that opens up, allows all the informtion to come through and then closes. But then you have Line of Sight issues, and people walking between the two devices.
2. A wireless device with a buffer on it, which accepts and holds all the packets. Then it puts them together into one job then sends it to the plotter.

I have tested a lot of different type of wireless devices and have yet to find one that works for Plotters or Lasers.

 

what is the purpose for going wireless? distance? convenience?

 

I have a hp650c printer, hp laser jet color printer, 2 cannon printers all hooked up and working on a wired and wireless network. The only issue I have had is getting the proper driver installed in the computer sending the file to the device. The two hp printers are network connected and the cannon and graphtec plotters are hooked up to the network through computers. The one that the plotter is hooked up to is connected to the network wireless. I have not had any problems printing or plotting on this network. The network consists of a wireless router and a hub, OS windows 95 through xp pro. Hope this helps Will.

 

Will you can find used lap tops on ebay fairly cheap if all you want to do is use it to run you plotter. Just a thought. I am using an IBM t20 to run my graphtec it has a pc wireless card and a parallel cable hooked to the plotter!

 

What I have done is network my plotter. my computer is in my back room and my plotter is im the front of my store. All I did is run cat5 cable just like normal networking and they have adapters that go from cat5 to serial or parallel. one on the computer one on the plotter and network cable in between. So you could use the comuter ant where there is a network plug. Hope that helps

 

no one here has problems with wireless networks being Hi Jacked ?

 

No use encryption! Had a tech-no geek neighbor try to break in and couldn't. he got into the other neighbor though.

 

There are various "WiFi" b/g print server devices on the market -but are mainly geared to data being sent via LPT or USB. I'm not sure how those same devices can handle RS232 serial type data -which is pretty much what most plotters rely on to this day.

I am surprised that the various players (Graphtec, Summa, Gerber, etc.) have not pursued the wireless thing more aggressively. I can see a lot of benefits to it. For one thing you can place the plotter where ever you like without having to run a bunch of cables to it. We have a "speed bump" on our studio floor protecting the serial cable for one of our plotters. It would be nice not to have that there anymore.

 

I agree that they should look into this! Maybe someone from one of those companies belong to this forum.