10.05 Software

The speed with which the MDA can create a drawing can be astonishingly high. You can select the drawing speed via menu File > Print XY Plotter > Settings. Here you can enter the feedrate, which determines the speed with which the MDA’s motors operate. In the release version, the speed setting will be limited to the optimum drawing speed so the user will no longer have to control it.

The best values for this federate are between F6000 and F10000. Below these values, the movement starts to get less smooth; above these, it can start to feel shaky and the chance of the drawing foil tearing is increased.

Pen Calibration

The current version of the MDA does not yet have an automatic calibration to determine the required force for the optimal line quality; for now, it may require some experimentation to come to the best setting. If the applied pen force is too weak, the lines will not raise enough; if too much force is applied, the drawing foil may tear. The subtle height differences between TactiPads also require adjusting the pen force.

In our current tests, we are using a value of P190; you can set this via menu File > Print XY Plotter > Settings > Pen down.

Manual pen force test

The suggested manual way of testing what the best pen force should be is to copy the command lines given below. Next, select File > Print XY Plotter, clear the large ‘Send:’ entry field, paste the command lines and click ‘Start plot’. This will draw a series of diagonal lines with increasing pen force that allow you to judge which gives the best tactile quality.