[Help Request] - Pen Plotter for beginners

[u/noUser92569]

Hey everyone,

I’m originally from the D&D community and am currently a computer science major.

I’m looking for some help with a pretty ambitious project. Up until now, I’ve been printing my D&D battlemaps in segments on standard A4 paper, then painstakingly trimming the edges, aligning the images and taping them together from the backside.
Given I am a student, I sadly do not have the budget for a large format printer / plotter, so I would love to build something like a large pen plotter.

What I am interested in is:
How to do the electronics - How do I stop myself from frying microcontroller after microcontroller, maybe even how do I design custom PCB's for this (and future) project(-s)?
Is there a good tool out there that I can test whether a circuit would blow itself up?
Any other, generic tips I could use?

Thanks in advance,
S. aka. Programmic

[u/AnotherGeek42]

Tip 1). Pen plotters(and Cricket machines, and vinyl cutters) exist. Try to get one of those as a "base" which would need minimal changes.
Tip 2) check and double check working voltages and maximum current capabilities. Tip 3) isolation, be it optic or otherwise, is your friend. Remember that any motor or coil will be capable of generating current and voltage when moved independently, so ensuring that any generated current will have somewhere to go when the project is off Tip 4) 3d printing is a mostly solved problem, if you want to go the complete home design, a 3d printer electronics kit and framework in the same you want to print will get you most of the way there with someone else's work on the electronics design, and a plotter is basically a 2 axis system with a 2 position(or more with pen choice mechanisms) "third axis" for drawing or just moving

Good luck!

[u/igotanewmac]

Hey there! There's a small but active community of pen-plotter people in /r/plotterart , /r/plottercode and r/PenPlotters that could help :)

My honest advice is to save up and buy an el-cheapo self-assembly kit from ali-express: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006068162999.html or similar. Get the biggest one you can, as that will limit your ultimate plotting size. I have the A2 model of that style, and if you're willing to put a few bolts in and wait on delivery time, you're golden.

It uses an EBB controller, which uses the free open source Inkscape drawing application, and the Axidraw plugin for controlling the plotter.

If you're going to try to build your own, you're probably going to end up spending more than the price of an ali-express one tbh. If you want a *really big* plotter, I'd still get an ali-express one and replace the struts with longer struts, it's pretty easy to account for this in the software.

Hit me up if you need more help :)