Which plotter would you recommend and why?

[eetm]

Our 13 year old plotter allegedly won't work with our Windows 7/Autocad 2012 upgrade. I can now get a new plotter. My usage is minimal, probably 2 to 4 times per month on average. I was plotting a color drawing once every other week to keep the pens fresh.
Any help is appreciated and thanks in advance.
Tom

 

[MiketheEngineer]

If you are truly ONLY making 2-4 drawings per month - head over to Kinkos/Fedex. While they may charge about $5.00 a sheet - it will relieve you of many costs and hassles. You can even e-mail it to them and pick it up when done!!

Otherwise, HP has some very nice 24x36 (D-size) printers - but they are in the $6000-$7000 range!!

We have switched most of our drawings (color) to "B" size (11''x17''). You can buy those from $500 -$1500 - depending on speed and options!!

We love it and so do our field personnel. Cut it in half and fax it. Fold it up and it fits in your back pocket!!

 

[cios106]

im using hp t1200. it is working very well. i have no problem for months. easy and fast.

 

[chicopee]

I am still using my dot matrix epson printer that I bought in the 80's to do initial prints ( A sizes)to correct mistakes, then, I head to Copycat to do the "D" sizes .

 

[zdas04]

For my one-man office, I use a Xerox WorkCenter 7120 for 11X17 color plots and am very pleased with the results (very fast, two sided when needed, very high quality). It was more than a little pricey ($7k), but I've been really happy with this color printer/copier/fax machine/scanner.

For bigger stuff I use a 17-inch Canon Image Prograf 5100. Again, pretty expensive but I defined a "half-D" and "half-E" paper size so that I can use Acrobat and tile D and E size pages onto two panes, connect them with glue stick, and can hardly see the seam. I just didn't have floor space for a D- or E-size plotter and this has been a great compromise. Print quality on photos is better than studio quality and I do a lot of that (photographs for framing and using the roll paper for long panorama scenes is amazing), if you don't print photos then this printer may not be worth the money to you.

David

 

[brandonbw]

I would go one step further beyond fedex and Kinkos and find a local reprographics place. I have found a few local places that would be nearly impossible to beat on price. In fact though I am ready to buy a plotter we still can't print cheaper than these places.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer

http://bwengr.com

 

[zdas04]

Farming out wide-carriage jobs often makes sense, but you have to be really careful. I printed out a set of color drawings for a job and the client wanted E-size drawings. The only job-shop I found with E-size color charged $2.50/sq ft. E-size is 34X44 (10.39 sq ft) so it was nearly $30/page. Twenty drawings in the set, 10 sets got a touch expensive. Bill was over $6k, if he had been OK with B&W in D-Size it would have been about $300 at the same place I found out later.

David

 

[MiketheEngineer]

Agree w/ repro shops BUT the closest one I know of is about 20 miles and a 30 minute car ride from here and I live in a fairly large city - St. Louis. Kinkos is 5 minutes away.

They just keep going out of business because of Kinkos and relatively inexpensive printers.

 

[ajack1]

I own a small design office and have a need for occasional printing, when out old plotter finally gave up I purchased a refurbished HP 1050C for around £1K with new belts and all tanks at least 75% full, it seems an absolute bargain especially when you look at the prices quoted by zdas04.

It prints oversize A0 and is very easy to load anything down to A5 (sorry I am not familiar with American sizes) good print quality, unless you want high quality photos and very cheap to run and quick, well worth a look, if you can find one.

 

[berkshire]

I am in the same boat, My draftpro exl will not work with windows 7. I have purchased an HP Officejet 7000 for B sized drawings and now send the bigger ones to Fed ex/kinkos.
B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor