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Hewlett Packard HP 7550A 8-pen plotter demo in 4K (handheld)
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- čas přidán 21. 03. 2020
- This video isn't perfect (I'm sorry for the focusing issues- I'll have to just put the camera on a tripod and let it sit on manual focus one of these days), but it is in 4K in resolution and might be the only one out on youtube that is such (of course youtube compression will butcher that, but it's all we have for now). This is a really cool pen plotter, perhaps the pinnacle of technology for the desktop versions as it could do 6Gs of acceleration on the pens. I performed the demo print and selected (felt tip) pens that as closely matched the default colors (per the manual) for each slot in the carousel. I got a couple of these printers as well as a 7550B (even faster!) as well as (4) 7595 large format DraftMaster printers (from my deceased uncle Dale) which were the floor version of this one. They will do 110 centimeters per second of plot speed. This was 1984 technology 1990 for the DraftMaster) and I have yet to see anyone's DIY version, either online or at places like Maker Faire come remotely close in performance to technology that was 20-30 years older. See hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?... for more info.
I just rescued one of these frim the trash and got it to work in windows 10. I could watch this thing. For hours.
They’re pretty amazing, aren’t they? :-)
How did you manage to connect it to a Windows 10 machine? Is there a HP-IB to USB adapter or something?
@@Fractols the one i have also has the rs232 interface. I made a cable to go from the plotter to the 9 pin that my pc uses. I use a usb to rs232 adapter for interface as my pc does not have rs232 port. Then i bought the winline software its a little pricey but that's the only driver i could find that works. The company did give me a 50 percent discount but i think that's a case by case basis
@@kwacz I checked the Winline website and ... My God, it looks as old as this plotter. $189 USD??... 😮😮
Love these things. Im glad some people kept them around to show people what they're missing
Thanks. I have 4 of the tabletop and 4 of the floor models. Trying to get a graphics package together that will take a bitmap photo and convert it into pen strokes and HPGL commands.
I could write such a thing for a modest fee.@@TroyeWelch
I owned one of these, for Patent drawings. I made $250K while using it before I went to a Design Jet Laser printer. This machine was a work horse.
I don't have this plotter, yet, but I do have several HP 7470A plotters I use with my test and measurement setup and one HP 7475A 6 pen plotter.
This is rediculously cool!
I'm your thousandth subscriber
Thanks! I may do a special casting video to commemorate it. (I don’t really push my channel as my goal isn’t to have a million subscribers)
Thank you for the video.
Cool; commented at a guy's video where he got ahold of a color dot matrix printer and commented about doing one using a pen plotter printer. lololol
Back to the 80s I say. lol
:)
@@Cartocopia Cool to see you too, Rob. Haven't seen you at GIMPChat much of late (nor am I there as often as I use to be). :)
Do you happen to know how it senses the edge of the paper when loading manually? Mine just spits it out of the back.
Sorry, I just saw this. There is probably either a switch or a light barrier break beam detection system that it’s not seeing. It it’s separate sensor with wires to the main board (conjecture here- I haven’t looked at mine) then it’s possible that the wires came off or have a bad connection. It’s possible the sensor is damaged or bent/misaligned due to rough handling, etc. I’m not sure. They built these things very robustly, so I’d be surprised if it was a wear point, like a mechanical switch (which wouldn’t be that fast anyway). I do have all the manuals, I think and could go digging at some point, but in general, these things were pretty simple. You could probably verify the sensor operation with a multimeter. It probably going between 5, 12, or 24 volts and ground when it switches (sees paper or not) so that should be verifiable with the covers off and the power on. Good luck. Email me at Troye.welch@ gmail (dot) com if you’re still having problems. I’m not an expert, but I am an EE (albeit pretty busy with day job and life) 🥴
@@TroyeWelch Hi Troye, thanks for the belated reply. I did find out what the problem was. It uses an opto sensor to measure the pen actuator mechanism. Theres a grating that passes through the sensor that consists of an LED and opto sensor and I think some simple electronics encapsulated in the sensor assembly. The LED wasn't working and after buying a similar but different part I saw that a thin bond wire had broken. I repaired it by replacing it with a small wire bridge and it worked fine since. The part I bought outputs a different number of pulses or has a different resolution so didn't work, but I was happy I got the plotter working with the original opto sensor. Thanks again for the reply. I have some new original pens to try,, and some old dry pens that I will try to re-ink.
Wow!
Indeed!
Its a shame this is out of focus for like half the video
Yeah. It’s a true statement, though not particularly insightful or helpful. It does have enough that’s in focus to convey the point (that it’s real and not fake) so I went ahead and uploaded it. I filmed it with my Canon DLSR (EOS5DMK2, IIRC) which doesn’t have great autofocus tracking. I’ll do another one at some point with my GoPro and just film the plotting from a fixed vantage point and without the commentary and repost a new one. This particular plotter unit burned in the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire along with 990 other homes/buildings, but I have since re-acquired two more along with some more pens which are all presently at my workshop in West Oakland. My plan is to ultimately be able to plot photos with them, using either software like Inkscape to do the bitmap to line drawing conversion and color pallet down sampling or maybe find someone to write some custom software (like Simon Vana’s brother (I forgot his name at the moment- great guy though) who brought his home made plotter creations to OpenSauce 2023 and 2024)
I got an email notification from CZcams user Yvon Sauvageau saying:
“We received recently an HP7550A like yours at our FabLab. I was able to run the same DEMO and also able to connect the machine with a USB connection ( StarTech 610385743) with a new configured serial cable as described at www.alfredklomp.com/technologiy/plotter. I was able to send a small HPGL file produce with Inkscape export function directly to the printer with Serial Port Monitor software, the plot was executed perfectly. I tried with a larger file but I received an overflow message. I tried to modify the serial spécifications but I have not succeed as yet. Do you have a clue what I need to do?”
I don’t know what happened to the comment as I’m not seeing it now, but the answer is that you need to look at serial FLOW CONTROL. This is done with certain lines in the RS-232, namely RTR(RTS)/CTS lines. It can be also done “in software” with XON/XOFF. The hardware or software flow control is what you need to limit the incoming data and avoid a buffer overflow. Good luck!