Roland DXY-1150 pen plotter drawing the Adler steam locomotive

The Adler steam locomotive (1835) drawn by a 1980's Roland DXY-1150 pen plotter, a rather hectic looking and sounding fellow.

The Adler ("Eagle") was a German steam locomotive built to order in 1835 by the British railway pioneers George and Robert Stephenson at a cost of 1750 pounds sterling. It was delivered to the Bavarian Ludwigsbahn (Bayerische Ludwigsbahn) which ran 7.45 kilometre long between Nuremberg and Fürth. After running successfully for over twenty years the locomotive was scrapped in 1857.

The Roland DXY-1150 pen plotter is a popular computer printing device from the 1980's for printing vector graphics. It prints by moving a pen across the surface of a piece of paper, much like a human hand does. This means it is restricted to line art. To be able to draw all sorts of shapes the pen needs to be able to move across the paper on an X and Y axis. The Roland line of pen plotters have a specific design where the paper is fixed and the pen moves along both the X and Y axis in all directions. This is different from the HP line of plotters where the pen only moves along one axis and the paper along the other. The drawing pen is mounted on a carriage that moves back and forth. These smaller "home-use" plotters were popular for desktop business graphics and in engineering laboratories for technical drawings. Starting from the mid-1990's pen plotters were gradually replaced by high-resolution inkjet and laser printers. Surviving pen plotters have often been converted to venyl sign cutters.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Roland
• DXY-1150
• pen plotter
• plotter
• Adler
• Eagle
• steam locomotive
• locomotive
• engine

[sexntuna]

Why does it draw different places all the time? Would it not go faster if it just sticked to one end of the drawing and moved towards the other end?

[Wepouaout]

@sexntuna

Yes, I think you are right, maybe it would. Right now it actually follows the original order in which the lines were added to the technical drawing by a human hand. The order can be optimized for drawing speed, but it would make the whole process watching this less interesting as it would stick to one point or a set of details for a longer period of time. Now it first takes shape and the details come in the end. Much better to look at.

[scj000]

do you have win xp driver?

I bought 1100 version but i don't find a good driver for it!

Thanks

Regards

Simone

[Wepouaout]

Yes, difficult to find, but look in Google for a Roland driver with the name d028220j, for instance by searching for:

Roland DXY XP d028220j

and the first few links will contain pointers to this drive on a Japanese Roland server.

[allwortht]

nice vid, great pic!

[Shan2809]

oh now thats just cheating!

[artisttutorials]

lol now all we have to do is get it to read someones mind and draw what they're thinking XD