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T

tatianna

Jan 1, 1970
0
I want to try putting a permanent ink pen in an old x-y plotter and have it
draw the traces on circuit boards directly.
Has anyone ever tried this?
Also, can anyone recommend a nice, SIMPLE circuit design program that will
generate Gerber files?
Thanks a lot,
P.
 
J

Joseph Legris

Jan 1, 1970
0
tatianna said:
I want to try putting a permanent ink pen in an old x-y plotter and have it
draw the traces on circuit boards directly.
Has anyone ever tried this?
Also, can anyone recommend a nice, SIMPLE circuit design program that will
generate Gerber files?
Thanks a lot,
P.

I did this with a DOS version of ORCAD PCB and an HP-7475 plotter. The
software produced the HP graphics language directly, but I had to write
a program to modify the output files for some reason, which I have
forgotten - maybe to produce a mirror image of the solder side because
it is normally shown from the top, "through" the board. You also have to
slow down the plotting speed to get nice results because the heavy
resist pen causes overshoot on the servo mechanism.

It works, but in the end you can get similar results just by laser
printing onto suitable transfer paper and ironing onto the board.

Are you sure you want Gerber files? What kind of plotter is it?
 
L

Leon Heller

Jan 1, 1970
0
tatianna said:
I want to try putting a permanent ink pen in an old x-y plotter and have it
draw the traces on circuit boards directly.
Has anyone ever tried this?

Join the Homebrew PCB Yahoo group, one or two people there have done this.
Also, can anyone recommend a nice, SIMPLE circuit design program that will
generate Gerber files?

EasyPC: http://www.numberone.com

It also generates HPGL files for driving a plotter.

Leon
 
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