A

Acceleration – The rate that a printer changes the velocity of the carriage or the paper. Acceleration is measured in units of g (1 g = 32.2 ft/s2).

Arc – A segment of a circle, also called a curve.

Axis – A geometric guideline used to place a coordinate.

B

Bottom Cover – Metal housing that protects the underside of the printer.

C

Control Panel – See Keypad.

Coordinate – A point that is referenced by its position on the X- or Y-axes of a printer. Vector or arc segments connect coordinates to create printing paths.

Carriage – The component that holds the ink cartridge(s). It travels along the Y-axis on the traverse.

D

Dancer Bar – Rod that holds the feed loop and take- up loop taut during printing.

DM/PL – Digital Microprocessor/Plotting Lan- guage. An instruction set used to send vector information to a machine that can represent the data as an image. DM/PL is used in software drivers for some design programs.

DPI – Dots Per Inch. Refers to the dot density or print resolution on paper.

Drive Shaft – The motor driven shaft that moves material through a friction feed printer. The printer drive shaft has a rough surface that grips the material.

GLOSSARY

F

Feed Loop – Slack material between the feed roll and the printer.

Feed Shaft – Metal rod that holds the paper roll parallel to the printer and allows it to turn during feeding.

File Name Extensions – In DOS and Windows based programs, the three letters after the period in

a file name. With graphics files the three letters denote a file type such as the vector and bit map based Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) and the vector based Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language (PLT).

Font – Refers to the style and width of letters, num- bers, and symbols. Examples are Helvetica Bold or Times Roman.

Frame – Segment of a plot established by the design software. Frames can be any size up to 21600-in (X axis) by 72-in (Y axis). Markers are generally plotted as a series of frames.

Frame Size – The X axis length of each part of the plot as established by the design software. Frame size is also called tile size, page size, etc.

Friction Feed – Process where the material is fed through a printer by placing it between a motor- driven drive shaft and tensioned pinchwheels.

G

Green Light Mode – See START Mode.

H

HPGL – Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language. Instruction set used to send vector information to a machine that can represent data as an image. HPGL 7475 is the most common plot language used for communication between a printer and design software.