Re: Versatec 3444 plotter- deja vu :-)
Posted by
Neil Gillies
on 2001-03-14 13:07:01 UTC
Hi
Jon Elson is bang-on with his comments about Versatec plotters !!!
We have used them at work for the last 12 or 13 years (now all gone - thank
God!)
If you had to work on them, the first thing you did was to wrap an old chem
suit over your clean-room gear (semiconductor mask plant) and make sure that
you had at least 2 pairs of plastic gloves on !! The wet toner was
guaranteed to get into __everything__ :-)
We had a couple of 3000 series, a 4000 and a couple of v80's - I still have
a double-necked gallon bottle of toner dispersant fluid under my barbie in
the back garden - makes great lighter fluid :-)
Anyway, the first homebrew CNC system I built utilised the stepper driver
board from one of the colour plotters - it was a 3 axis driver, but used
only 2 in the machine - 24V steppers as I recall. I still have it in the
attic in the garage somewhere - complete with mdf baseboard and metric
studding leadscrews :-)
However, I wouldn't buy a machine just to get the 2 steppers and driver
board - it's absolutely NO use for anything other than a boat anchor (and
I'm sure the greenies wouldn't be too happy about the toner dispersant
floating about ;-)
Interesting way to get ink onto paper though - colour printing made 3 passes
to get them all down :-)
Cheers
Neil
___________________________________________________________________________
Neil D. Gillies Tel: +44 (0)1383-823489
SeaGull Technologies Fax: +44 (0)870-0543622
11 River View Mobile: +44 (0)771-4330793
Dalgety Bay, Fife neil@...
Scotland KY11 9YE http://www.sea-gull.demon.co.uk
Jon Elson is bang-on with his comments about Versatec plotters !!!
We have used them at work for the last 12 or 13 years (now all gone - thank
God!)
If you had to work on them, the first thing you did was to wrap an old chem
suit over your clean-room gear (semiconductor mask plant) and make sure that
you had at least 2 pairs of plastic gloves on !! The wet toner was
guaranteed to get into __everything__ :-)
We had a couple of 3000 series, a 4000 and a couple of v80's - I still have
a double-necked gallon bottle of toner dispersant fluid under my barbie in
the back garden - makes great lighter fluid :-)
Anyway, the first homebrew CNC system I built utilised the stepper driver
board from one of the colour plotters - it was a 3 axis driver, but used
only 2 in the machine - 24V steppers as I recall. I still have it in the
attic in the garage somewhere - complete with mdf baseboard and metric
studding leadscrews :-)
However, I wouldn't buy a machine just to get the 2 steppers and driver
board - it's absolutely NO use for anything other than a boat anchor (and
I'm sure the greenies wouldn't be too happy about the toner dispersant
floating about ;-)
Interesting way to get ink onto paper though - colour printing made 3 passes
to get them all down :-)
Cheers
Neil
___________________________________________________________________________
Neil D. Gillies Tel: +44 (0)1383-823489
SeaGull Technologies Fax: +44 (0)870-0543622
11 River View Mobile: +44 (0)771-4330793
Dalgety Bay, Fife neil@...
Scotland KY11 9YE http://www.sea-gull.demon.co.uk