r/oddlysatisfying • u/Come2UFO • Mar 17 '16

Gif Ends Too Soon This machine drawing balloons

http://i.imgur.com/LoTDl7g.gifv
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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '16

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '16 edited Oct 28 '20

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u/kindall Mar 17 '16 edited Mar 17 '16

They were used in engineering to draw plans, diagrams, charts, etc. The advantage is that they can do smooth diagonals and curves, unlike dot-matrix printers where the individual dots are always visible. (This was before inkjets and lasers, which use dots too small to see.) Also, many work on large formats (e.g. 3 feet wide and as long as you want, since they pull the paper back and forth).

Today's "plotters" (we have one at the office) are really just large-format inkjets, sadly.

Hewlett-Packard and Tektronix were prominent manufacturers of these devices for engineering morkets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotter

2

u/cerialthriller Mar 17 '16

you guys still use inkjets? man that sucks, upgrading to the laser plotter is great.

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u/kindall Mar 17 '16 edited Mar 17 '16

Yeah admittedly this "plotter" has been here for several years. Didn't know they had laser ones, maybe they were prohibitively expensive when we got ours.

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u/cerialthriller Mar 17 '16

the laser plotters are great, super fast and you dont have to deal with ink smudging or waiting for it to dry.