from Hacker News

Ink and Algorithms: Techniques, tools and the craft of pen plotting

by selvan on 5/8/25, 8:14 AM with 4 comments

• by alterom on 5/11/25, 9:07 PM

  Awesome!

  I've rigged my 3D printer to use as a 2D plotter, and had a ton of fun programming it to draw fractals like the Dragon Curve [1].

  I also made a tool to do cursive handwriting/calligraphy with it, to make fancy postcards and whatnot [2].

  Guess this would fit right on that blog :D

  [1] https://www.instagram.com/p/BlJ8dgmAaTA/?utm_source=ig_web_c...

  [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V45cj0-GQyQ

• by gyomu on 5/11/25, 11:19 PM

  Very nice resource, pen plotters are so fun. One of my favorite subreddits is /r/plotterart - feels like one of the last few hobby-related subreddits I can go to that retained the feeling of early days subreddits, just people showing cool stuff they've made.

• by JKCalhoun on 5/12/25, 12:37 AM

  More of this please.

  The plotter shown reminded me of the lowly harmonograph [1]. As old or older than Scientific American.

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonograph