DBUG> Plotters
Leon Miller
Looking to purchase new plotter for small office 24" - price / reliability windows7 a must.
Suggestions appreciated.
Leon MIler
Interstate Showcase & Store Fixture Co. Inc.
PO Box 941
Teaneck, NJ 07666
2014674522
2016790555
201928 0052 fax
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arcon
Are you handy? Are you on a budget? Or are you just a "tight-arse" like me, fed up with paying $200 for a "service" where all they did was replace
cartridges? If you are, forget new and read on.
Get yourself an old HP plotter - preferably a 750C or if on a tighter budget a 450C. You can pick those up "not working" for anything from $1 to $100.
In fact, buy 2 or 3 of them so you have spares. Usually they are not working due to a broken rubber belt which can be purchased for $10 on ebay or the ink cartridges have gummed up from lack of use. I picked up the largest 750C recently for $50 in a not working condition. Got it home, plugged in new cartridges and away it went, it's pumping out beautiful full size A0 size colour presentation plans at the moment. New "genuine" cartidges cost as little as $5 on ebay. So my "new" printer cost me $50 plus $20 for a set of cartridges. If you are printing presentation drawings you will need to buy plenty of black cartridges but if you are only printing outline drawings those black cartridges will last a long while and the colour cartridges will probably just sit in their carriages doing nothing.
They were $3000 to $10000 printers in their time and still produce fantastic results. I bought my first plotter new for $7000 and when it started playing up I was shocked to see how expensive genuine spare parts and servicing was. People discarded them for that reason and due to high service costs by rip-off technicians. You can download service manuals off the net, there is very little that can go wrong that can't easiliy be repaired by yourself and because so many people got rid of their machines there is now an =bundance of spares and cartridges.
Your other more sophisticated options are 2500CP, 3500 CP and HP5000.They print with continuous inking systems and you have the option of printing with solvent inks on polyester or durable coated canvas so you can print site banners, signs ,advertising hoardings and you can print on vision film for adhering one way graphics to glass which may be useful in your showcasing and store fixture business. I think they have 1200dpi resolutions as well and for banners you can get take up spools. I'm sure
I've seen them go very cheaply in the states.
regards,
wayne allen,
sydney australia
Joe Krawiec
I have been using an HP Designjet 110Plus nr for about 5 or 6 years. It seems that it has now been replaced by the Designjet 111, but I have no idea what is different. From the images on HP's site, it looks the same. The plotter is slow, the quality is good (but not exceptional), and I have to admit that until a few days ago, it has been trouble free. I'm hoping that the problem that I am having is that I need a new print head - it should arrive in a few days.
If I was going to replace it, I would probably take a good look at the Canon products. I have purchased a couple of HP products over the last year or two, and it seems that the quality and (especially) customer support has gone downhill.
Good luck!
Joe Krawiec
South Plainfield, NJ
Looking to purchase new plotter for small office 24" - price / reliability windows7 a must.
Suggestions appreciated.
Leon MIler
Interstate Showcase & Store Fixture Co. Inc.
PO Box 941
Teaneck, NJ 07666
2014674522
2016790555
201928 0052 fax
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JAID
… I have purchased a couple of HP products over the last year or two, and it seems that the quality and (especially) customer support has gone downhill….
It would be great pity of an organisation so notable in my experience has permitted a decline in either its service or product. I have not bought anything in the last couple years but my HP equipment has given exceptional service for me and customer support also not used in several years has also been exceptional. The quality of the output may not have been exceptional in its own right but was exceptional for purpose. Perhaps it goes to show how important it is that individuals do their bit in keeping a supportive income stream going for these special organisations.
Neil Blanchard
> Get yourself an old HP plotter - preferably a 750C or if on a tighter budget a 450C. You can pick those up "not working" for anything from $1 to $100.
The issue with doing this is using an old machine on Win 7, in either 32bit or 64bit. There simply are not free drivers available; though you can pay for the WinLine Plus driver. This is about $200 for the first copy and about $50 for each additional copy -- and all machines that use DataCAD should use the same driver, even if they have an HP driver available. In other words, to make DataCAD smoother, you need the same driver on all machines.
Drivers are quirky, and sometimes you can find a driver for another model that does work. The older the model, that harder it will be to get a free driver that works. For what it is worth, we got a DesignJet 500 working in Win7 64bit, but it took hiring a consultant to get the right version of a driver that works. All the drivers we tried that we could download from HP did not work.
Nobody has yet mentioned the Canon plotters -- these are significantly less expensive than HP units. New plotters from HP and Canon (and others?) are much, much faster than older plotters.
Sincerely, Neil
http://neilblanchard.blogspot.com/
Alan T. Hendry, RA
450C that I'd had for 10 years. I love the bigger ink tanks on the
Canon along with the built-in HD and network interface, and can insert a
single sheet without unloading the paper roll. Ink cost per ounce is
supposed to be cheaper than HP's - but I can't confirm that. It's VERY
fast compared to the old 450C and works perfectly under Win7.
I'll echo Neil's proviso about using an older machine - my 450C printed
fine from DataCAD under Win7 Pro except it would NOT print any bitmaps
... period. My logo is a bitmap and I have to insert bitmaps onto
sheets for our state-mandated Title 24 energy calcs - which killed the 450.
--
Highest Regards,
Alan T. Hendry, AIA
On 8/23/2011 12:47 PM, Leon Miller wrote:
> Looking to purchase new plotter for small office 24" - price / reliability windows7 a must.
>
> Suggestions appreciated.
>
> Leon MIler
>
> Interstate Showcase& Store Fixture Co. Inc.
arcon
Blanchard pointed out there were no windows 7 drivers available for these
old plotters.
A discussion and links to the free workaraound using the XP Pro 64 bit HP
750C driver can be found on HP's own designjet forum:
Let me know if it works. As I say, I don't have win 7 so I can't test it.
-regards,
wayne allen