Contex is probably the largest manufacturer of wide format scanners worldwide. They’ve acquired their primary competitor, Colotrac, and provide (OEM) scanners for HP wide format.

The quality and reliability of Contex scanners is excellent, particularly in the IQ Quattro or HD Ultra line. While the HD Ultra line is best for graphics, historical document preservation and thick media mounted on poster board, the IQ Quattro and SD One lines are engineered for technical scanning.

The SD One scanner is available in 24” 36” and 44”. Prices range from $2,700 to $3,900. These are a great fit when you just have occasional scanning. The target market is for construction sites and sub-contractors who need to scan as-built construction plans or need to have a digital format to perform take-offs for estimating.

The scan quality is good on the SD One and they have built-in tools for creating markups. They’re durable and mobile too so, moving a scanner between job-sites is easy. Scanning and copying operations are performed using the built-in touchscreen so you don’t need a separate PC to use as the controller. Basic functions include; pre-defined document types, set resolution 200, 300, or 600 DPI, file format, i.e. PDF, TIF, JPG, contrast adjustment. Scan speed is under 2 ips (inches per second). Fast enough for a few documents but not a good fit for scanning multi-page plan sets or an archive of hard copy.

The IQ Quattro scanner is also available in 24” 36” and 44”. Prices range from $3900 to $7500. These are really the flagship scanners for productive technical scanning. A large touch screen LCD and MS Windows PC are used to drive the scanner. Contex includes powerful, yet easy to use, NextImage Repro or NextImage Archive software for batch scanning, auto file naming, advanced image enhancement or correction, saving to multiple file formats and even accounting. A lot going on here but, the interface is easy to learn and use.

These are fast scanners too – up to 14ips per second. So, you can fly through a plan set or archive of wide format documents in no time. They’re not portable like the SD One but, don’t need much calibration either. And, reliability is top notch. We see very few service problems with IQ scanners. However, I still recommend keeping a service plan in place.

So, just to recap; the Contex SD One scanners are a good fit for occasional scans for sharing as-built drawings with other project stakeholders direct from the job site or estimating office.

The Contex IQ Quattro scanners are more about productivity and working with batches of documents or those in poor condition that need enhancement.                                                                                                               

Scan away!

Most people don’t realize how affordable a service plan truly is for their HP DesignJet. And, that it only takes 1 or 2 service calls on a “time and materials” basis to exceed the price of having a service plan in place.

Included with the purchase or lease of an HP DesignJet plotter is a manufacturer warranty. Depending on the unit, it’s either 90-days or 1 year. The warranty can be supported by HP direct technicians or by your printer partner, providing they have received training, and are certified by HP.

You can choose to extend the warranty at the time of purchase and save a little or wait until the initial warranty is about to expire and extend the warranty with a post warranty HP Care Pack.

The price of the extended or post warranty depends on the model and age of your HP DesignJet. For example, an extended 3-year warranty for a new HP DesignJet T1600 1 roll printer is $909; five year being $1729. And, for comparison, a 2-year post warranty is $949.

This covers printer components, on-site repairs, remote support, technician travel. The consumables (ink, printhead) carry their own warranty. If something goes wrong with the printer, you call for service and the problem is resolved. Without a service plan, your printer sits idle for days or weeks while you waste valuable time trying to get approval from management for money to repair the plotter.

At MasterGraphics, we also provide a MasterPlan Managed Services Service Plan. This combines the repair service as well as consumables, including paper, ink, printheads.

HP DesignJets have a built-in web server that monitors usage in 4 categories; Monochrome CAD Line Drawings, Color CAD Line Drawings, Low Density Color Images and High Density Color Images. This allows for accurate meter readings for what you’re printing. You then pay a monthly base rate of, say $50 plus a square footage rate of something like $0.10 per square foot for line drawings and $.25 or more for color images.

Throughout the month, you order paper and ink at zero dollar amounts. At the end of the month, your printer meter is polled. You end up with just a single invoice for the month that includes the base rate plus square footage of printing. It makes the process of maintaining service and supplies for your plotter much more manageable.

Print away!

HP-GL/2 Driver: Nine times out of ten, you’ll use the HP-GL/2 driver for wide format printing on a Microsoft Windows platform. It sends print jobs to be processed at the printer (vs the computer) in a vector format. Better line accuracy is achieved with an HP-GL/2 driver. This is the preferred driver for CAD files.

PostScript Driver: Specific applications like Autodesk Revit, Bentley MicroStation, Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, take advantage of the postscript driver for better image quality when printing things like renderings, presentations, high quality images. Only HP and Océ provide a Genuine Adobe PostScript Driver. Others turn to a free postscript driver, such as Ghostscript. If consistent accuracy and compatibility are important to you, choose the genuine Adobe postscript driver. You just may have to pay a little more for it. But, then again, how much would it cost you if design details miss a dimension or are off on the scale.

HP PCL3 Driver: In rare occasions, you’ll use the HP PCL3 driver. This driver is typically used for small format printers to print from desktop applications like Microsoft office. It’s not recommended for wide format printing of CAD files. Most IT support staff aren’t as familiar with wide format as they are with small format and will download and install PCL 3 drivers if nobody advises them to install HP-GL/2 or Postscript drivers.

For Mac users, the postscript or PCL 3 drivers can be used for wide format printing. This is usually determined by the application, i.e. Adobe Creative Suite, ArchiCAD, Sketchup Pro.

Print away!

Plotters, or Wide Format Printers, are interchangeable names for printers that can print designs wider than 24 inches. The standard size for a wide format printer is 36 inches, although they are also available in a few other widths.

Wide format printers for CAD fall under 3 categories; entry-level, professional-level, production-level. I’ll just focus on entry-level and professional-level for this post.

An entry level printer is a good choice for a home office or single user. They range in price between $1500 and $3000. One reason they’re considered entry level is the small ink cartridges and limited paper capacity. You should keep in mind, the larger the ink cartridge, the lower the price per print. Also, if you try to use an entry level printer in a workgroup setting, somebody is going to be changing ink constantly.

An entry level plotter can only hold a 150 foot roll of paper, the frame or printer stand is not as sturdy as on a professional level printer, and prints drop in a basket under the printer.

A professional level plotter is engineered for workgroups that print less than 3000 square feet per month.  Unattended printing is possible because they can hold large ink cartridges (>300 ml), stack prints flat, and have beefy processors for processing complex files quickly. Professional-level printers are more reliable and durable than entry level printers.

Prices for professional level-printers range between $,3000 - $10,000. Price per print is considerably less than entry-level printers at about $0.08 per sq.ft. The price of the printer is determined by its capabilities, i.e. single-roll, dual-roll, width, integrated scanner, Adobe PostScript, overall productivity.

It’s been my experience that all too often, businesses wait until a plotter crashes, then place the buying criteria more on what can be purchased for less than $3000 than on what truly fits their needs and end up with an entry-level printer trying to meet the demands of a busy design department. The plotter is a critical business tool. Spend some time with an experienced printer provider to help you find a wide format printer that aligns with your workflow.

A final word that factors in to the cost – maintenance. While inkjet plotters include a limited time warranty – usually 1 year, plan to extend the warranty or purchase a service plan. This is the best way to extend the life of your printer and avoid costly downtime.

Print Away!

Print Away!

Absolutely. In fact, several wide format printers include multiple rolls for various types of media.

Take for example, the HP PageWide XL 4100. This 40-inch printer comes standard with a 2-roll drawer and can be upgraded with an additional 2-roll drawer; 4 rolls total. A CAD department or construction office typically loads 3 rolls of various-size plain bond paper for printing line drawings and construction plans. The 4^th roll might contain a speciality media like say, 35lb heavyweight bond, for printing signs, posters, or presentations.

On the other hand, you may have a graphics printer such as the HP Z9+ 44-inch printer. This printer can be ordered as a single roll or double roll configuration. With the single roll printer, you would manually unload and reload the type and size of media depending on the application its needed for. With the 2-roll model, you can switch between rolls of various types and sizes.

So, for example, you might use an 8mil polypropylene media for producing durable signage and switch to a satin photo gloss for printing photo quality images. Occasionally, you may need to replace the specialty media with plain bond for printing CAD designs.

Keep in mind each type of media uses a specific profile in the printer. Wide format printers have a dozen or so media profiles to choose from on the control panel. The media supplier provides a media guide so you know which profile to use with each type of media.

You can also create your own media profiles. Printer manufacturers include software for this or, you can access it directly through the printer driver.

Specialty media can be pricey so I recommend printing just a few inches at first, then cancelling the print. Also, use free printing software like HP Click, Canon Direct Print or Canon Free Layout to view, resize or nest images before printing. This will help save on media costs.

Print away!

Overview

Instead of expecting someone to decipher a spec sheet to determine which MFP is a fit for their business, I’ll try to write this is in friendlier terms to someone who isn’t a printer know-it-all like me.

The HP DesignJet T830MFP is a wide format printer, scanner, copier engineered for use at job-sites or small offices. Emphasis is on convenience printing/scanning, mobility, and collaboration.

The HP DesignJet T3500MFP is a wide format printer, scanner, copier engineered for CAD design workgroups. Emphasis is on productivity, high reliability and unattended printing for low volume printing (less than 4000 sq.ft. per month)

Specifics: HP DesignJet T830MFP

Paper capacity: This printer holds a single roll of paper up to 36” wide and 150’ long (2” core). Prints are released in the front and drop into the basket under the printer. If you’re printing more than a couple of pages, it’s best to take them out of the basket as they fall. This keeps pages from getting curled up and out of order.

An auto sheet feeder for A/B size documents is located on the rear of the printer. It’s meant to serve as a convenient substitute for A/B size if you don’t have a smaller office printer close by. I wouldn’t rely on it to replace an A/B printer. Also, you must unload the roll feed to use the sheet feeder.

Ink | Printhead: The printer includes a pre-installed print head which can be replaced by the end user when it needs replacing. How long the print head lasts depends on how much is printed. In most cases, this amounts to once a year. A replacement print head is ~$400.

The printer holds 4 ink cartridges: C,M,Y,MK. The black cartridge (MK) is pigmented ink, which helps reduce smudging and fading, and makes the drawing archivable. A unique feature is the ability to use 3 different size ink cartridges. Generally, we see most people use a 300ml Matte Black cartridge, and smaller 40ml or 130ml color cartridges. The image quality is quite good for a 4-color printer. A 300ml cartridge is ~$180; 40ml is ~$37.

Scanner: The scanner is tightly integrated on the top of the printer. For the price, it’s a pretty impressive unit for a convenient walk-up scanner/copier. There’re a few nice image settings on the control panel to suppress background noise, adjust contrast, de-skew, re-size, and invert blue prints. The scan speed is respectable at 4.5 inches per second (ips) for gray scale; 1.5 ips for color.

Scanning to network, PC direct, cloud and email is supported.

Connectivity, memory, speed: Fast Ethernet, WiFi and built-in hot spot, USB thumb drive slot. 1 Gig RAM. Prints a D-size drawing in 25 seconds.

Summary: This is a durable, reliable little multifunction plotter for small offices, estimators and, in particular, construction job sites. The mobility of it is amazing. It can easily be taken off the stand and loaded in the back of an SUV to move from site to site.  Making a few prints here and there is quick and convenient. I wouldn’t consider it for making collated sets of plans though. I also wouldn’t recommend it for batch scanning. But, for getting copies made, or marked-up as-builts drawings scanned as single-page or multi-page PDFs and sent to project stakeholders, it’s a perfect fit. The price is right too at just $5,995. A scanner alone is about that much.

Specifics: HP DesignJet T3500ps MFP

Paper capacity: This printer holds 2 rolls of paper up to 36” wide and 500’ long. By using two big rolls of plain paper, you drastically reduce your cost per print. This also allows you to load 2 different size rolls, for example, a 30-inch roll for 30x42 plans and 22-inch roll for half-size. Or perhaps, plain paper on one roll and heavy, presentation bond on another. You can also use 150’ or 300’ rolls of inkjet media.

This is key - prints are delivered to a unique, top delivery unit that keeps them flat and organized. This solves the “curled-up inkjet prints issue” and allows you to print collated sets up to 100 pages.   

Ink | Printhead: The printer includes a long-lasting print head which can be replaced by the end user when it needs replacing. Of course, how long the print head lasts depends on how much is printed. A safe estimate is to plan on replacing it after 9000ml of ink has been used. A message on the control panel will let you know when it’s time for replacement. A print head is ~ $350.

The printer holds 6 ink cartridges: C,M,Y,G,MK,PH. The matte black cartridge is pigmented ink. This helps reduce smudging and helps make the drawing archivable. Ink cartridges are 300ml. This is considered big ink and again, helps keep per-print costs low. With 6 inks, you can not only produce stunning images for presentations, but also, true neutral grays for construction plan printing. A 300ml cartridge is ~$120.

Scanner: The tightly integrated scanner is mounted on the top of the printer. It’s fast, at 7.5 inches per second (ips) for gray scale; 2.5 ips color. Any faster and it would pull the document out of your hand and destroy it. I’ve seen this happen. A super-fast scanner is generally only needed if you work in an archive facility. Scanning to network, PC direct, cloud and email is supported.

The scanner has a full set of tools for image adjustment plus, customizable pre-sets that allow you to make templates for various types and conditions of documents. For example, if you frequently scan a set of documents to a multi-page PDF format, 300 DPI, mixed CAD/GIS, that needs a bump in background removal, you can create a pre-set for that so you don’t have to make these manual adjustments every time. Of course, it already has several set up for you to choose from as well.

Connectivity, memory, speed: Fast Gigabit Ethernet only, USB thumb drive slot.  128 Gigs RAM, 500 Gig Hard Drive. Beefy Intel Processor. Prints a D-size drawing in 21 seconds. Instant printing from cold start – less than 30 seconds for first page to print. The T3500ps includes an Adobe PDF Print Engine. This is a huge plus and allows the printer to quickly process and print large, complex PDF or PostScript files. Built-in security tools and HP Web Jetadmin makes a network administrators job easier.

Summary: The T3500 is a highly reliable workhorse of a printer for design workgroups or enterprise deployments. Consider it as an upgrade to your existing plotter or even as a replacement for a low volume, black & white toner plotter. The paper capacity, flat stacker, and big ink allow for unattended (no babysitting) printing. Print black & white, true grayscale or color CAD files for about $0.07 per sq.ft. (similar to toner). Price: $9,995 – although most HP Partners offset this with a $2500 trade-in credit.

Print Away!

1) Print Head(s). This probably accounts for the highest number of service calls we get for wide format inkjet printers (plotters). Older printers used several, multi-color print heads. Current technology either uses a single-unit print head or 3 or more universal-color print heads.

The control panel on your printer will either display an error code or notification that a print head needs replacing.

This catches most people off-guard because the price of a single-unit print head is typically between $350 – $500 and is mistakenly thought of as a serious printer problem. Which it is, if you just replaced one and are getting an error code again. Otherwise, they typically last at least a year or more for low volume printing. Think of print heads as just a consumable item like ink or paper. Budget for replacement. If you have a managed service plan, make sure they’re included in the plan.

2) Paper Handling. There are still a number of older inkjet plotters in use that drop their curled-up prints in a basket under the printer. If you’re printing more than a few sheets, this can turn into a real mess in a short time. It may also cause a printer jam if the prints get too backed up in the basket.

Until recently, only production, toner-based printers provided a way to keep prints flat and organized. A top delivery unit or high capacity stacker was either standard or optional for production printers.

Both Canon and HP have strived to solve this problem on inkjet-based printers. Canon has been able to make a catch-basket that can be configured to keep about 20 prints stacked flat.

HP has mastered this for their T-series workgroup plotters. They engineered a top delivery unit that comes standard and keeps up to 100 sheets flat and organized. There’s even a tension rack that hold them in place.

Also, of note, most older printers only hold 150-foot rolls of inkjet paper. The paper on 150-foot rolls have more of a curl. Newer technology can hold 300-foot rolls of inkjet media, or, in some cases, 500-foot rolls of plain paper. Plain paper is easier to handle and costs considerably less than coated inkjet paper.

3) Adjusting Page Size. Changing your page size from one size to another can be cumbersome if you’re using something like the free version of Adobe Acrobat for your wide format printing. Acrobat is geared towards letter-size printing. Most times, you have to waste several prints before you can figure out the exact settings to use when printing PDF files with Acrobat.

This process is frustrating, a loss of productivity and can become costly depending on how much media is wasted.

If you’re a designer or estimator that works almost exclusively with PDF files, you would be doing yourself a world of good to invest in Bluebeam software. It’s both inexpensive and the best tool for PDF workflows. The print settings not only make resizing easy, they also have great options for batch printing and flattening PDFs to make sure they’re print-ready.

Otherwise, printer manufactures like HP and Canon provide software to make PDF printing easier. HP Click, for example, is a free download for HP Z-series and T-series printers. With HP Click, you can drag-n-drop PDFs to create a collated set of plans for printing. The software checks for PDF errors. You can easily resize and get a true visual of how the document will look when printed.

4) Slow Print Times. When we discuss speed, there are two categories to understand; first page out and mechanical print speed.

First page out is determined by how much time it takes to process the file, either on your computer or at the printer. Complex files and slow processors can cause wait times as long as several minutes before printing starts. As design files continue to be more complex, an older printer not only takes a long time to process, but the risk of loosing valuable design data increases. Construction plans or machine assemble plans with errors = loss of productivity and money.

Mechanical print speed is typically rated by how many seconds or minutes it takes per print. For example, most of today’s inkjet plotters can produce a D-size or A1-size print in less than 25 seconds. That’s about 2.5 prints per minute. Not bad considering most printers older than 10 years can barely produce 1 print per minute.

Keep in mind, production printers, such as HP PageWide XL, can produce up to 30 D-size prints per minute.

When evaluating low volume workgroup or entry-level printers, consider the physical memory or processing memory a printer has. The hard drive has very little to do with processing files. Understanding the architecture of the actual processor can be like reading a foreign language to some. Just know that, as with PCs, the internal processor gets a huge bump in power every few years.

HP takes an extra step in processing power by adding the Adobe PDF Print Engine to their workgroup and production printers. The PDF Print Engine relieves the burden of processing complex files from your computer, and at the same time, protects the integrity of the your PDF design data.

5) Reliability. Printers can be critical business tools. Many people wish the plotter they bought 10 years ago will continue to serve their needs for another 10. Are you one of those that thinks this is actually possible but don’t even have a service plan in place?

Printers are machines. Machines have components that wear out or break.

A plotter costing less than $3000 is considered entry-level and will probably be very reliable if you only have one person printing a few times throughout the day. On the other hand, if you deploy this entry level printer into a workgroup setting, you can expect problems to develop. Problems lead to downtime. And, that can be costly and frustrating.

Work with your printer partner to determine which class of printer will meet your printing workflow now – and in the near future. Seriously consider budgeting for extending the warranty or have your printer partner setup an annual service plan. In most cases, the price you pay for an annual service plan is less than couple of T&M repairs.

In my 25+ years of experience, the biggest source of frustration I’ve observed is when a customer’s plotter breaks down, and without a service plan in place, has to get funds approved for repairs.

Service issues can sometimes be the fault of the consumables. Use genuine ink from the printer manufacturer. Check the expiration date on you ink cartridge when you purchase it. Some places sell inexpensive ink because it’s sitting on their shelf nearing the expiration date. Make the paper is good quality and the correct type of media for your application.

Print Away!

jff

IT Professionals spend most of their working hours trying to keep company information secured from hostile intruders. It’s not hard to imagine what a nightmare it would be to discover someone’s tapped into your engineering group to steal plans you’ve been working on for months. Plans that could include some of your greatest innovations to date.

As you know, it wasn’t too long ago that you could email live CAD files to project stakeholders with little concern about having them intercepted. Unfortunately, we now live in a world where there’s as many criminal hackers as there are honest, hardworking individuals

I don’t mean to sound the alarm and raise fear levels, but your wide format printer is probably the last place you’d think of leaving a hole in the fence – this is really happening though.

Printer Security Strategy

There’s been times when I’ve met with IT or Ops directors at various companies and posed this simple question to them:

What’s your printer security strategy?

To which I’m usually met with a blank expression or a vague response like “we have everything locked down.”

I hope so. But, just to be on the safe side, you may want to read HP’s White Paper “Keep Your Data Safe.” It does a good job of explaining four areas of printer security. 

1. Data in transit
2. Data in storage
3. Intrusion prevention
4. Authentication and authorization

I’d be happy to email you a copy (joe.fuller@mastergraphics.com)

While most printer manufacturers are starting to make encrypted hard drives standard as some form of security, they still have a ways to go to provide the tools IT administrators need, especially for those manufacturers that use MS Windows as their printer controller operating system.

Not surprisingly, given their background with PCs and enterprise networks, HP has put a strong emphasis on engineering built-in security tools as standard features for their professional and production-level printers.

Even though it adds slightly to the price, I think this will eventually force other manufacturers to include security in the same way cell phone carriers and ISPs are finally doing. Unwanted robo-calls and viruses should be headed off at a higher level. Once they reach our phone or computer, it’s generally too late to stop their damage or scams.

So, my recommendation is to evaluate your printer security on the network, implement a printer security strategy and include security features as a criteria when evaluating your next printer.

Print away!

jff