After shimming the corner posts, a plot with Sakura Micron pens came out nicely:
Spirograph pattern – Sakura Micron – Z-0.25
They’re all 01 size pens, with a nominal 0.25 mm line.
Just for fun, a plot done with four sizes of black Sakura pens at Z=-1.0 before the Great Leveling:
MPCNC – Sakura Micron black pen widths
The 005 pen made a nearly rectangular single-pass tour around the perimeter of the plot, so you’ll see it passing through every legend.
The chunky-by-comparison 08 pen = 0.50 mm:
MPCNC – Sakura Micron 08 Black – detail
The 05 pen = 0.45 mm looks much crisper:
MPCNC – Sakura Micron 05 Black – detail
The 01 pen = 0.25 mm:
MPCNC – Sakura Micron 01 Black – detail
The almost-can’t-see-it 005 pen = 0.20 mm:
MPCNC – Sakura Micron 005 Black – detail
If you were doing this for a living, you’d probably use 05 pens, because plotter pens are hard to find.
Original HP plotter pens produced a 0.3 mm trace (with a hard to find un-worn tip) roughly equal to Sakura 03 pens, but I haven’t seen anything other than black at Amazon. There’s apparently a 003 pen with a 0.15 mm line; that’s just crazy talk.
Jamming Sakura pens into a plotter pen adapter for the MPCNC makes little sense, so I should gimmick up a specialized holder with some thumbscrew action to keep them from crawling upward out of the holder.
#1 by eriklscott on 2018-01-08 - 21:49
From experience, an 005 pen tip will wear away pretty quickly under this duty (I’m using a Cameo Silhouette with an art pen collet). The fiber point will wear down to the level of the metal sleeve it pokes through. Being cheap/frugal, I file new points on worn out drawing pens anyway. You don’t get the same size line anymore, but you can at least use it for writing. I find the Sakuras wear out before they run out. Anyway, when they do I just sharpen them with a diamond file like they were a pencil.
If you want to lay down a lot of ink, check out the “Graphic 1” size. Graphic 2 and 3 are chisel points and may not be what you want at all. I tend to use 005, 08, and Graphic 1 for drawing and 01 for writing. The 05 holds up well in the Cameo.
#2 by Ed on 2018-01-09 - 16:54
I tried pulling the tip further out of the sleeve, but they’re firmly anchored inside. Using a saw on the sleeve seemed too dramatic; I never thought of a file. I’ll try rehabilitating a couple of wrecked pens and report back.
Thanks for the experience & suggestions!