IT takes special sproketed thermal paper (which is
unobtainium nwo, I
have a few boxes I use for demonstrations). There's one stepper motor
driving a sproketec roller to feed the paper. And anotehr to move the
printhead across the paper.
I believe you can easily make a machine to turn fax paper into
sprocketed paper :)
teh 13th element is used for plotting. In this mode,
the paper and
carriage are moved like a pen plotter, the element is turned when the
'pen' should be 'down'. Oh yes, the element temperature is controlled
depending on the speed of motion to keep a constant line intensity.
Uau!
The control electronics uses an HP
'nanoprocessor' with the normal ROM
and RAM. And a lot of TTL for the motor contorl and HPIB interfaces. Oh,
and the PSU is one of those that uou hope never to repair, it's a complex
switcher spread over about 5 boards.
Uau 2.0 the mission! :oD
I have an analogic plotter from HP but I don't remember the model...I'll
look for that :D