plotter control

[Andrew Helgeson]

I have an old HiPlot XY plotter I want to use for making PCB's.

Everything I need is right there, the drivers for the  X/Y steppers and pen up/down solenoid are on a separate board from the processor (a 6800) and comms board.

All I need to do is hook up the stepper drivers and front key panel to an Arduino.
For a pen I was going to use a daylo pen, I'll drill the holes by hand.

I just spent a few hours wading through google searches and I'm no closer to a clear idea of which software I need on the Arduino.

Working  within the limits of the board size the "free" version of Eagle CAD limits me to should be no problem.

Has anyone else tried this?

Andrew

[Scott B]

I started with Eagle - and found it very frustrating, switched to KiCAD and have never looked back - apparently it has far less T's & C's also which is a bonus.

[Thomas Sprinkmeier]

Hi Andrew,

On 1 October 2012 00:43, Andrew Helgeson <cyber...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have an old HiPlot XY plotter I want to use for making PCB's.
>
> Everything I need is right there, the drivers for the X/Y steppers and pen
> up/down solenoid are on a separate board from the processor (a 6800) and
> comms board.
>
> All I need to do is hook up the stepper drivers and front key panel to an
> Arduino.
> For a pen I was going to use a daylo pen, I'll drill the holes by hand.
>
> I just spent a few hours wading through google searches and I'm no closer to
> a clear idea of which software I need on the Arduino.

I assume the arduino is going to be told what to do over the
USB/serial port and you need to translate that into stepper-motor
commands?

Perhaps a few input buttons (emergency stop?).


Thomas

> Working within the limits of the board size the "free" version of Eagle CAD
> limits me to should be no problem.
>
> Has anyone else tried this?
>
> Andrew
>

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[Jonathan Wheare]

Are the stepper drivers simple "step and direction" devices? If so you
could adapt a 3D printer firmware to drive your device. Sprinter
(https://github.com/kliment/Sprinter) is the one I am most familiar
with.

J.

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[Steven Pickles]

Along the lines of what Thomas asked, I would suggest looking at the PC side programs you are going to drive it with, and then look for a firmware that can communicate with it.

pcb2gcode is a common tool for this. The RepRap arduino firmwares talk gcode. But you might need to tweak a little to get it working. Tweaking is made easier as the RepRap firmware is an Arduino sketch. I'm not certain if the firmware will fit on a plain uno/duemilanove as the RepRaps normally use a Mega.

I use the "Fab modules" software from MIT to talk to our Modela MDX-20 for milling PCBs. It can generate a few different output languages for different devices - maybe it could even talk to the original plotter electronics.

Of course if you just need a PCB milled, email me and I can try it on the modela. It's technically the hackerspace's but it lives in my shed because subtractive manufacturing is messy :)

pix

[Steven Pickles]

Context: Sprinter is what I was referring to as "RepRap firmware".

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