HP 7585b plotter

I have wanted a larger printer for a while, for printing sheet metal designs and similar miscellaneous uses. Of course I can print on regular 8x11-inch letter-size paper or 14-inch legal-size paper, cut the unprintable margins, and tape pages together, trying to get them straight. That, my friends, is annoying.

I have used some inkjet and laser printers which can print on larger 11x17-inch or A3 paper (the LaserJet 4MV was awesome), and it is a nice improvement. That would accommodate many of my drawings without requiring cutting and taping. But I still find myself wanting to print 24-inch designs, which might fit on 2 sheets of 11x17/A3, or might require 3 sheets. Still annoying. Yes, my life is so tragic because I have to tape together two or three pieces of paper a few times a year. Wahhhh, wahh, boo hoo.

I've been watching Ebay and Craigslist for several 11x17-inch inkjet models or the LaserJet 4MV, because I figured that if the right model came up at the right price, I'd buy it even if I had to still tape two pieces of paper together (oh, the hardship...). If you know me, you know the right price is "dirt cheap", and my definition of dirt cheap is often dirtier and cheaper than many other people's. For this, I've been thinking the magic number is about $20. That pretty much excludes Ebay, because shipping on any large item, even a somewhat lightweight inkjet, is going to be almost that much. I'd have to win a large-format inkjet for about $5 to make it work. I esnipe'd a few, but didn't win them, and never found any close enough for local pickup.

This large-paper printing problem has been solved for decades in industry by pen plotters, capable of printing large pictures in multiple colors by drawing with pens instead of a dot matrix. While they can be quite large and highly accurate, pen plotters are also slow by today's standards, which makes them a good candidate for my interests. As a bottom-feeder in the cyberspace food chain, I thrive on everyone else's cast-off technology. All I have to do is lie in wait long enough....

Sure enough, last week there was an ad on Craigslist for an HP plotter for $10. I emailed for details and got back some nice photos. I googled it and got enough information to decide it was worth getting. I went to pick it up, and it filled up the entire back of my van laying on its side. A little larger than I expected.

It was being discarded by a local land surveyor business. The guy gave it to me free, and didn't even want the $10 they asked. I think they were just glad to have it out of the way and not taking up storage space. He predicted I would have software problems with it, because it is old and obsolete. That certainly is true for your average computer user; printer drivers for pen plotters have been gone from Microsoft Windows for a while. Fortunately I don't run the Pestilence From Redmond at home, so it is a non-issue for me. I have not fully determined my software set yet, but I know I will have a number of choices coming from Inkscape (my most comfortable drawing program). I expect that I will likely try "pstoedit" for converting PostScript to HPGL, also.

The plotter powers on and lights up the control panel ok. I managed to mangle a piece of cheap newsprint paper trying to figure out the pinch wheel rollers, so I am off to a good start. I eventually figured out that I am missing an adjustable wheel from the middle of the paper path, so I can't currently use just any size of paper I want. I have to use 36-inch wide paper, the full width of its paper path. But once I figured out that part, I was able to run the self-test print routine. It works!

It is in very good condition for being over 20 years old; it stll looks almost new. The serial number starts with "2701A". In the classic HP serial number scheme from the 1970s through 1990s, the first two digits are the number of years since 1960. So at least I know it was built in 1987.

My next task is to figure out the serial cable, and see what I can plot.

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