Plotters were a thing before we had nice laser and inkjet printers. But now they’re coming back like 80s music (lol), this time at the intersection

Pen Plotter Programming: The Basics

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2024-05-13 06:30:09

Plotters were a thing before we had nice laser and inkjet printers. But now they’re coming back like 80s music (lol), this time at the intersection of code and art. Compared to printers, which are way faster, plotters are nice because they produce results that look hand-drawn. And it’s fun to watch them draw! I’ve now purchased two modern hobbyist plotters, first the Makeblock XY Plotter and more recently the AxiDraw v3. I used each purchase as an opportunity to hack up some code for controlling the plotter and for generating interesting artwork.

In this article I’ll share a few tidbits of information when it comes to programming plotters to do their plotting efficiently. Note that none of this is necessary if you’re using the software included with the plotters, but it’s useful if you’re trying to programmatically control the plotters yourself.

These plotters basically consist of two stepper motors (one for the X-axis and one for the Y-axis) and a servo motor to move the pen up and down. You can put in just about any drawing implement (pen, marker, pencil, charcoal, etc.) and move it around on the paper to draw something.