You also need to look at field use. Highlighting or heavy pen usage, water drips, sweat, wet/oily gloves will all smear the ink jet type prints unless you go with a more expensive paper...which only smears less.
We just got an Oce Colorwave 500 with scanner (it uses the solid paint ball looking media) that we have been happy with. Not a lot of color prints just yet but it's clarity on even the lower grey scale settings is impressive. Dan -----Original Message----- From: Ben Young [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2016 10:01 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Wide format plotters Thanks all for the responses. My personal feeling is that color paper drawings are somewhat deprecated by the large influx of inexpensive and durable tablet computers. With programs like BIM 360 Glue, you can access an entire 3D model of a building in real time with very little lag, and also use GPS tagging and QR codes to get augmented reality output of tricky install setups and such. I am a very pro-technology type of person, so it feels so odd to not buy in fully to color paper prints, especially when the idea behind it is coming from one of the people in our company who I would typically classify as a Luddite. Maybe he misses the old HP450C we threw away 8 years ago? At this point, though, after talking to our Canon rep, the Colorwave 500 is actually less expensive than the Plotwave 750 which would be the closest match to our current machine. The TDS 600 does have a separate scanner, so we will actually free up some space to possibly have another device if need be. For those using the Canon iPFs, do you have any drying issues with typical construction prints? I'm sure for larger prints or more color intense stuff you would need coated paper, no? The big push in 'construction for color prints' from what I could find Googling the crap out of this last night is that full color architectural and other permit-type prints can save money on the back end my limiting the amount of missed items and change orders, etc. etc. The problem with this theory, though, is that most of the A/Es we deal with don't output color PDFs, they're all monochrome! So until everyone goes to color, the benefit of printing construction drawing sets just doesn't exist. That leaves just us printing our own drawings and/or overlays when and if we directly get CAD files from other trades. Our company also does fire alarm, HVAC, plumbing and process piping, and I color is pretty standard in the alarm field. That all being said, if I can get a better idea of the output of the Oce toner pearls, especially in black, if its close to the output of the B5 we use now, then we will be OK there, since they cost roughly the same. Color for our letter-size printer is crazy expensive, and they lock down that printer pretty tightly. There is actually a sort-of consumer reports for printers as well, a place called http://www.buyerslab.com/ but they're subscription only and I cannot see how to even purchase a report or two from them, it seems more geared towards people who sell printers and print services. -Ben Benjamin Young On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 3:29 PM, Tom Duross <[email protected]> wrote: > I've got an old Mutoh pen/pencil plotter back in the original box you > can have for $1. > My HP T1100 is a workhorse, very happy with HP. > > I've been asked to get a plan in place for when we have to replace our > current plotter. We have an Oce TDS 600 which is hard to get > electrical parts for, and the controller is causing our IT department > all kinds of headaches. > > The TDS 600 is really a beast of a printer and hasn't been down more > than half a day in over five years, so we're very happy with the Oce Brand. > > My issue is going to Color. Right now I'm looking at the Colorwave > 500, which is slightly slower, but isn't inkjet based (gel toner > pearls, instant dry, no special paper, etc.) Have others moved into > color for their field prints? > > Obviously bid drawings are rarely in color, so I'm thinking only about > 5-10% of the printing we do is going to be in color, and we average > about > 16,000 sqft per month. > > Any other manufacturers I should consider that can match the long-term > reliability of Oce? > > > So consumer reports doesn't test plotters, so reviews or other pro/con > information is scant for me at this point, so I thought I would throw > this out to the sprinkler forum people since we probably all have to > print our stuff out at some point. > > Any input or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. > > Benjamin Young > _______________________________________________ > Sprinklerforum mailing list > [email protected] > > http://lists.firesprinkler.org/listinfo.cgi/sprinklerforum-firesprinkl > er.org > > _______________________________________________ > Sprinklerforum mailing list > [email protected] > > http://lists.firesprinkler.org/listinfo.cgi/sprinklerforum-firesprinkl > er.org > _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://lists.firesprinkler.org/listinfo.cgi/sprinklerforum-firesprinkler.org _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://lists.firesprinkler.org/listinfo.cgi/sprinklerforum-firesprinkler.org
