Plotter
I'm going to put absolutely minimal effort into this page. I'm not even sorry.
It has been brought to my attention that, technically, this isn't a plotter, because it doesn't use pens. However, it calls its cartridges "pens," so I can only imagine that it would like you to believe that it is a plotter. I will continue to indulge its wishes.
Contents
About the plotter
The shop has a HP DesignJet 650C. The full model number is C2859A. This plotter will plot 300x300 dots per inch on a 24 to 36 inch wide paper. There is a roll of paper in it; I have no idea how long that will last. The plotter's IP is 10.56.1.180. So, socket://10.56.1.180 in CUPS land.
Tough road ahead
The thing about this plotter is that it is Satan. I (hfuller) have been screwing with this thing for the better part of an hour and a half (while drinking vodka on and off) and I have just now gotten it to plot anything. So I felt like I should document everything in case it decides to be the son of Lucifer ever again. If you need to plot anything ever, be ready for a world of hurt; that's all I'm saying.
Lern 2 plot
You only have to do any of this if you boot the plotter and it tells you that there's no media, or it's misaligned, or it couldn't find the edge.
- First, open the roll cover, and never close it, ever again. It only makes things impossible and doesn't really have any benefit that I can tell.
- Now, make sure that the roll is mounted correctly in the plotter. (It can plot on sheets, but I've never tried this, only on a roll.) There is a core plastic rod that holds the roll of plot paper. It has two ends. One is large and one is small. The small one mounts on the right side of the printer. One thing of note is that when you pull the paper toward you, it must be coming off the TOP of the roll!!! This is absolutely vital. If you are ever trying to plot anything and the plotter is just absolutely destroying the paper, crashing, locking up, making awful noises, etc., then you have likely screwed this up. To fix it, remove the roll, put the smaller end cap on the floor, and stand the roll upright. Then pull on the larger end cap, and the roll will dismount. Take the rod out, flip the roll over, and remount everything together like it came apart. Then mount the roll in the plotter with the larger end to the left. Wow, that was a hell of a bullet point.
- Make sure that the end of your paper is straight and not totally mangled and destroyed from your past encounters with the Satan-plotter. If it is not straight, you can pull the roll out a little bit and lay it over the top of the plotter. Pull out your knife or a razor blade or something and cut the paper along the groove provided. It's just above the top of the hinged window. Then take up the slack you just made in the roll.
- At this point (before you have fed the paper into the plotter at all) you will boot the plotter. It will complain about not finding media, or not finding the edge, and that you need to reload the roll. Move the lever next to the control panel so that it is down. Find the perforation on the right side of the big brushed aluminum rod thingy. Line up the tail of the roll so that it entirely covers this perforation. Now, put your fingertips on top of the tail so that you are holding it tight against the aluminum thingy. Scoot the paper forward so that you are kind of guiding it along the aluminum thing. At some point the plotter will hopefully grab the paper and pull it in, then inexplicably eject it back toward you. (If this doesn't happen, check out the troubleshooting section.)
- Keep your left hand on the paper and hold it in place. Use your right hand to operate the control panel. It will ask, is this a roll or a sheet? Let it know, and it will ask what kind of paper it is. Use the arrow keys to scroll to the right kind of paper, but don't hit Enter yet. If you are just putting in paper, select "special paper." I have no idea what the hell special paper is, but this thing works fine with, you know, paper. So just select that one unless you are printing on transparency or photo paper or whatever.
- As soon as you hit Enter with your right hand, move it very quickly back to the paper and help the plotter suck the paper up some more. If you look inside of the window, you will see the big bar thing raise up, the paper will scoot under it, and then the bar will drop back down. Then the plotter will attempt to feed the paper out the front, and you will see it emerge. If at some point, the plotter begins destroying the paper, which it will, believe me, you can just fling the window open and the plotter will immediately stop doing anything. You can then raise the lever near the control panel, re-roll your paper, and start over. Joy.
- Anyway, if you get the paper to feed through and it comes out the front of the plotter, it will tell you to "raise lever." Do that, and then it will display this cryptic-ass message with arrows in it. Something like, "Pull and shift <- -> to align." What it's trying to communicate is that you should pull the paper out a little bit and then make sure the left and right edges of the tail are aligned exactly with the roll. Once you have done this, take up the slack in the roll, and then lower the lever to clamp the roll down. At this point the plotter will suck the paper up a little bit and then slice off the excess.
- The plotter will now ask you to close the roll cover. Never do this. Didn't you read step 1? Just hit Enter and it will go to "Status: Ready to plot." If you're lucky, anyway. If you are not lucky, sacrifice an infant and try again.
- You can now plot to the plotter. Its IP is 10.56.1.180. Good luck.
Troubleshooting
Oh, it didn't work? What a shock.
- Plotter never sucks up the paper. Okay, this is ridiculous, but bear with me. Turn off the plotter. Hold the up arrow and enter keys with your right hand, then boot the plotter with your left. When everything stops moving for 10 seconds, let go of everything and then hit Enter. The menu will come up. Scroll to Utilities and hit Enter. Now hit Up and Enter at the same time. From the Service menu, pick "Media sensor calibration." It will tell you to remove the paper, so, you know, do that. Then hit Enter, and the plotter will save this as the "I have no media" state. Power cycle the plotter.
- The plotter destroys anything I feed into it. Did you feed the roll the right way? No you didn't. Take the rod out and remount it the other direction. Try again. If it doesn't work, try a sheet. If that doesn't work, buy the shop a new plotter.
- I don't have drivers for this plotter. You're running Windows, aren't you? Shame. The drivers are here. Be sure to pick the C2859A when you install.
- The network stuff doesn't work. Well, you can reconfigure the network using the control panel. If you have trouble, use only the up arrow. The down arrow did not work for me when I was configuring the network and TCP/IP settings.
Success stories
Windows with Adobe Illustrator
For this, I was running Windows 7 (on the Fab Lab computer). I installed these drivers. In Ai, I made a new document with 36 inch width and 6 inch height. I put some text on this document. Then, I chose File, Print. In this dialog, I selected the plotter, then "ANSI E (34x44 in)" size. I picked the "Fit to page" option. I then hit "Setup" in the lower left corner. The Windows print dialog appeared, and I hit Preferences. I selected Landscape orientation, then hit "More sizes." Here, I entered a 36 inch width. I entered a height of 8.5 inches because that is the minimum height the plotter will cut. I left it on "No scaling" and selected the "Advanced" tab. I picked "Autorotate" to ensure the shortest height to be used (Landscape orientation). I hit OK, then Print. At this time the preview was all screwed up, so I selected "Fit to page" again (even though it was already selected) and the preview appeared correctly. When I hit "Print," the document plotted correctly. Hfuller (talk) 21:57, 23 May 2015 (CDT)
