Pantography

Old drawing pantograph.

The pantography is a system of drawing, recording or cutting, which uses a pantograph and allows copying, engraving, cutting or modeling, in different scales, an artistic design or technical drawing of a flat.

Technical drawing

The Pantography is a drafting technique that allows the draftsman, using a pantograph, to reproduce a drawing or plan with high precision and at a desired scale, always conditioned by the dimensions of the pantograph used. Its application is linked to all industrial and artistic sectors in which it is necessary to accurately enlarge or reduce any linear drawing, be it a plan or an artistic layout.

Since the birth of Xerography, the reproduction of scale plans was replaced by photocopiers and later by continuous paper infographic printers (infographics). Currently, manual pantographs have been replaced by computer programs in different design applications and by infographic pantographs that allow the reproduction of scale layouts with great precision, without the repetitive intervention of a draftsman being necessary.

Infographic printers pantographs

They can be plotters on cylinders, which support continuous paper and a print head, which prints the document contained in the computer disk with which the printing equipment is controlled in an ink jet.

Infographic cutting pantographs

There are infographic pantographs with which you work on a flat surface, usually used to cut both signage and signage, as well as for cutting fabrics, for clothing, plastics, packaging, replacing die-cutters, with cuts made with steel blades, diamond or laser beam.

3D Pantographs

There are also 3D pantographs, born from computer development with which objects drawn on the plane can be reproduced in volume; although these new instruments could also be considered as a "lathe" with greater reproduction capacity, with which it is possible to reproduce, for example, a human head, to scale, taking the information from a digital database from a metric analysis carried out with an infographic explorer equipment (scanner) and substituting the work of a sculptor. This technique is frequently used for modeling objects or parts; the realization of automobile models, architectural designs, personalized advertising objects, etc.

Recording systems

It is made up of a die with a sharp point, which is usually diamond, guided by a pantograph, a process that is carried out letter by letter or motif by motif. In the advertising sector it is used to mark resistant items that can withstand the cutting action of this system, such as metals. The result of the pantography is a print that does not have a defined color, but depends on the second layer of the recorded material.

Currently, pantography is a high-precision recording system that is computerized. It is done using computer controlled plotters. The mobile head uses a diamond tip or a bur to trace the lines of the drawing by eroding the surface of the metal.

Pantography is an expensive form of printing well suited for small series, such as celebration trays, trophies, medals. However, it offers elegant, indelible and brilliant recordings.