Just thought I'd share a completely random project for the rest of you first gen fans.

If you care about the background of the project, read on. If long descriptions bore you, stop here and just enjoy the picture.
This is a melding of a lot of my interests: graphic design, CNC, computing, and cars. I recently picked up an old pen plotter (circa late 80s I think: Roland GRX400) and have been working on getting it up and running at home. I also had an old 800mhz laptop that I inherited gathering dust, so I dedicated it to the plotter. The laptop is running Debian 8 stable and Openbox, and for the graphics I just upgraded Inkscape from the older one in the repos to the newer .91, which works nice. It's very slow being so old, but it gets the job done and it kinda fits with the old school theme . Next up, the original ball point pens that it used were spotty at best, even when they were pretty fresh, so I decided to upgrade to something a little smoother and newer. After some testing, I decided on the Energel line of pen refills because they are smooth, dry quickly, and are available in a decent amount of colors. I turned up some adapters in the lathe (need to do more) and cut down the refill a little and it works sweet. The rest kinda explains itself: drew up the Skyhawk in Inkscape (it's time consuming) and after a few weeks of working on it here and there, it was ready to export the program and send to the plotter, and here's the result! I also did a 22x34 version (this photo is 8.5x11 stuck to the fridge) to hang in the workshop. It's really fun to watch the plotter work, and as an added bonus, kids love coloring random line drawings I make or download and of course like watching it also.

Attachments

2015-08-17 10.01.38.jpg (857k)

• 86 Skyhawk wagon : 2.0SOHC swap, Megasquirt, 20SEH cam
• 93 Sunbird sedan : 2.0SOHC, Microsquirt, ported head, 10:1
• 88 Sunbird coupe : 2.0SOHC, turbo project car, giant tires

Nice! You could even make some graphics for the car that way if you want!

Way ahead of you! I did some vinyl decals of the logo using a milling machine and a vinyl blade. Next up is getting the plotter to do vinyl cutting. The pen holder doesn't seem to be rigid enough to make clean cuts while applying pressure, so I think I have to build an adapter to make it more solid.


• 86 Skyhawk wagon : 2.0SOHC swap, Megasquirt, 20SEH cam
• 93 Sunbird sedan : 2.0SOHC, Microsquirt, ported head, 10:1
• 88 Sunbird coupe : 2.0SOHC, turbo project car, giant tires

In the same neighborhood Drivesa5......

Been using Linux for nearly 10 years now I guess. My latest brand be LinuxMint 17.1. All my post and photos are run through it. Been using Linux so long you could say I'm darn near Windows illiterate ........

I'm not a guru but I can get myself out of most snags. Love being able to run the operating system of my choice and reload anytime of my choosing



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Great to see other guys out there who understand the wide format printing world. I have been a Xerox wide format digital dealer since 1986 and now I am KIP wide format dealer. 15 years ago we would take in 2 or 3 old pen plotters every week and scrap them. Auto-cad and Unix back in the day. Not much put on paper anymore so the market has dropped out on large high dollar systems.

Hey Orlen, good to see another Linux convert! I know what you mean exactly and I certainly don't miss Windows at all, especially after seeing and using some of the new ones, looking back at issues & crashes I had in the past, and also other people that still use it and go through the same problems. I'm no guru either, but I do like messing around with it & am also running Mint 17, but XFCE on my work desktop here. I started in Ubuntu and as I've learned more have gradually tended toward more of the lighter and simpler distributions, plus most of my hardware is on the old side. I have Crunchbang on another laptop which I like a lot, and am about to replace the old Ubuntu on my wife's desktop at home with Mint .. it's hard to beat for ease of setup and use.

Very interesting 84conv, I imagine you mostly deal with larger commercial entities now. You're right about not much going on paper, I've seen other places that have plotters etc. which are just collecting dust now. Here at my shop, we replaced the pen plotter with a NovaJet II. Another old one, but it's an inkjet. It was given to us and it seems to work pretty nice, although slow. It's not fun to watch like the pen plotter though haha.


• 86 Skyhawk wagon : 2.0SOHC swap, Megasquirt, 20SEH cam
• 93 Sunbird sedan : 2.0SOHC, Microsquirt, ported head, 10:1
• 88 Sunbird coupe : 2.0SOHC, turbo project car, giant tires