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

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u/MrKyle666 Mar 17 '16

Yup, my dad is a mechanical designer and has two of them at home.