About Plotter

A plotter produces vector graphics drawings. Plotters draw lines on paper using a pen, or in some applications, use a knife to cut a material like vinyl or leather. In the latter case, they are sometimes known as a cutting plotter.

In the past, plotters were used in applications such as computer-aided design, as they were able to produce line drawings much faster and of a higher quality than contemporary conventional printers. Smaller desktop plotters were often used for business graphics.

Printers with graphics capabilities took away some of the market by the early 1980s, and the introduction of laser printers in the mid-1980s largely eliminated the use of plotters from most roles. Plotters retained a niche for producing very large drawings for many years, but have now largely been replaced by wide-format conventional printers. Cutting plotters remain in use in a number of industries. Cutting plotters use knives to cut into a piece of material (such as paper,  mylar  film, or vinyl film) that is lying on the flat surface area of the plotter. The cutting plotter is connected to a computer, which is equipped with cutting design or drawing computer software programs. Those computer software programs are responsible for sending the necessary cutting dimensions or designs in order to command the cutting knife to produce the correct project cutting needs. [2] In recent years the use of cutting plotters (generally called die-cut machines) has become popular with home enthusiasts of paper crafts such as  cardmaking  and scrapbooking. Such tools allow desired card and decal shapes to be cut out very precisely, and repeatably