Printer for blueprints

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I hate the big prints. Just too unwieldy. We do everything 24x36 and print it out as 11x17. No one has ever complained they cannot read them, plus they can be printed out by anyone that has a normal printer. Just have to be careful to use reasonable sized fonts so the text is readable.

Mechanical details are done so they print out 8.5x11 or 11x17. No reason they have to put fifty details on the same sheet and print it out on a huge piece of paper.

Our shop has big monitors to use for viewing the 3d drawings of the whole machine. A lot more useful then paper.

Much easier for our customers to print them out that way too. We no longer provide any paper copies of the drawings or manuals. They get a thumb drive.
 
petersonra said:
I hate the big prints. Just too unwieldy. We do everything 24x36 and print it out as 11x17. No one has ever complained they cannot read them, plus they can be printed out by anyone that has a normal printer. Just have to be careful to use reasonable sized fonts so the text is readable.

Mechanical details are done so they print out 8.5x11 or 11x17. No reason they have to put fifty details on the same sheet and print it out on a huge piece of paper.

Our shop has big monitors to use for viewing the 3d drawings of the whole machine. A lot more useful then paper.

Much easier for our customers to print them out that way too. We no longer provide any paper copies of the drawings or manuals. They get a thumb drive.
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This looks like one of those "agree to disagree" issues. My techs hate 11x17. If you print so the devices are visible, they are at a scale that makes them so large you can't tell where they are supposed to go. Almost all our floor plans are at 1/8" = 1'. That doesn't shrink down well.
 
LarryFine said:
It's a large-format printer.
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Those might be plotters these days... In the 1960s, they were usually flat-bed plotters-- a flat surface about the size of a pool table, with a mobile bar that slid pens across the paper lying on the table. Large diagrams were drawn. Nowadays, flatbed plotters can also slide razor blades around to cut out pieces of cardboard.

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Another vote for the Epson eco-tank printers. Some friends got one a couple of weeks ago and it's been great (ET-15000 series IIRC).

(Like any ink jet printer, they do need periodic exercize to stop clogging, but in an office that shouldn't be hard.)
 
LarryFine said:
It's a large-format printer.
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Historically, a plotter used an x-y motion and an actual ink pen to produce a line drawing.
Small plotters used flat paper, often held down by suction, and an x-y pen motion. Larger units used one dimension pen motion with bidirectional paper movement for the other direction.
The pen plotter was the only practical way to produce large line drawing documents before ink-jet technology. Dot matrix just could not handle that size effectively.
The more sophisticated plotters even had controlled pen changing for different line widths and colors.
I would not call any large format printer a plotter.
 
For me, color scanning is a must-have. I hate having markups, especially small ones like typos or small number changes, blending in with the original B&W printing. Anyone who would bring me markups in pencil or black pen was yelled at and given two red pens on their way out the door.

I've got the Epson WorkForce EC-C7000, it prints and scans color 11x17. I think it cost me about $250-300.

The EcoTank version is the Epson EcoTank Pro ET-16600, which will also print and scan color 11x17; but costs about $1,000.

Not sure where the break-even point is on pages printed and ink costs between the two.

I like that it has two paper trays, each holding half a ream (~250sheets) so I can keep 8.5x11 and 11x17 paper loaded and not have to manually change paper depending on what I am printing.

Prints quickly and is pretty quiet. I can also print directly from the iPhone app which is nice.

No complaints about the printer so far.
 
GoldDigger said:
Historically, a plotter used an x-y motion and an actual ink pen to produce a line drawing.
Small plotters used flat paper, often held down by suction, and an x-y pen motion. Larger units used one dimension pen motion with bidirectional paper movement for the other direction.
The pen plotter was the only practical way to produce large line drawing documents before ink-jet technology. Dot matrix just could not handle that size effectively.
The more sophisticated plotters even had controlled pen changing for different line widths and colors.
I would not call any large format printer a plotter.
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HP's desktop plotters used static electricity to hold down the paper...
 
tshetter said:
For me, color scanning is a must-have. I hate having markups, especially small ones like typos or small number changes, blending in with the original B&W printing. Anyone who would bring me markups in pencil or black pen was yelled at and given two red pens on their way out the door.

I've got the Epson WorkForce EC-C7000, it prints and scans color 11x17. I think it cost me about $250-300.

The EcoTank version is the Epson EcoTank Pro ET-16600, which will also print and scan color 11x17; but costs about $1,000.

Not sure where the break-even point is on pages printed and ink costs between the two.

I like that it has two paper trays, each holding half a ream (~250sheets) so I can keep 8.5x11 and 11x17 paper loaded and not have to manually change paper depending on what I am printing.

Prints quickly and is pretty quiet. I can also print directly from the iPhone app which is nice.

No complaints about the printer so far.
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I have a question. I have taken my full sized plans and shrunk them down to 11x17. The full size ones state the scale as 1'=50'0" when I convert that to the smaller paper that is 11x17 what happens to the scale. Is it now just 1/4=1'
 
BobTheBuilder007 said:
I have a question. I have taken my full sized plans and shrunk them down to 11x17. The full size ones state the scale as 1'=50'0" when I convert that to the smaller paper that is 11x17 what happens to the scale. Is it now just 1/4=1'
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What size were the original plans? 22x34, 24x36, 30x42, 36x48? When you convert to smaller paper, the scale goes UP. You are probably going to be not less than 1"=100'0".
 
I was taught never to scale a print. Of course that was back in the blueprint days when the original was laid on the copy paper and run through rollers that held them together where it was exposed to UV light. (Contact print) There was the possibility that the two could slip a bit distorting the image on the print. With digital printing that is not common but if dimensional accuracy is important I would still check by scaling something of known dimensions.

-Hal
 
hbiss said:
I was taught never to scale a print. Of course that was back in the blueprint days when the original was laid on the copy paper and run through rollers that held them together where it was exposed to UV light. (Contact print) There was the possibility that the two could slip a bit distorting the image on the print. With digital printing that is not common but if dimensional accuracy is important I would still check by scaling something of known dimensions.

-Hal
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This is where you're supposed to field measure or refer to the architectural prints and confirm in the field. That's a royal PITA if you're trying to sling 48" round duct about the place.
 
Depends on how they were reduced (what factor) 46/17 = ~2.7 but 24/11 = ~2.1. Just assuming a 3:1 reduction, then 1" would equal 50/3' or 16'8". The only way to be sure is to find a known dimension and measure it on the reduced print.
 
BobTheBuilder007 said:
Originals are 24x46 which you're right 1'=50-0 Then 11x17 will be at 1=1/4? Correct?
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Without getting too technical regarding margins, you will have two different scaling factors. Eleven inches is 0.45833 of 24 inches and 17 inches is 0.36956 of 46 inches. The smaller of the two is the one that gets all the drawing on the 11x17 sheet. To find the new scale, divide the base (50'0") by the new factor, 0.36956. The new base is 135.29602'. If you want to relate that to 1/4", divide the base by 48. So now you have 1/4"=2'9-53/64" (approximately).
 
BobTheBuilder007 said:
Originals are 24x46 which you're right 1'=50-0 Then 11x17 will be at 1=1/4? Correct?
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No. You are scaling backwards and 11x17 doesn't scale nicely from 24x46 as the ratio of the dimensions is different. It scales nicely from a 22x34 sheet as it is half the size and the ratio is consistent. Assuming you just scaled to fit, the 17" dimension would control and your scale ratio would be 2.71:1. Assuming your original scale was 1"=50' and not 1'=50' as stated, the new scale would be approximately 1"=135.3'.
 
If you only on occasion need a full sized print and you have the PDF file, and possibly some other file formats, you can print it on multiple pages with cut lines on the pages and piece them together. Kind of a pain but does work in a pinch for just a small quantity of full sized sheets. Beware that slight misalignment of pages can throw accuracy off when measuring something that crosses multiple pages.
 
kwired said:
If you only on occasion need a full sized print and you have the PDF file, and possibly some other file formats, you can print it on multiple pages with cut lines on the pages and piece them together. Kind of a pain but does work in a pinch for just a small quantity of full sized sheets. Beware that slight misalignment of pages can throw accuracy off when measuring something that crosses multiple pages.
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Some printers have a "tiling" feature that can facilitate this.
 
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