If your workgroup inkjet plotter is of the older variety, you probably mumble a few choice words every time you send more than one page of a D or E size print, resulting in a mess of curled up prints, overflowing the catch basket, and scattering all over the floor.

Adding to your frustration to complete your project on time, you need to seek out a flat surface nearby to asseble your set of plans – usually an open conference room or breakroom table.

Clearly, this limits an organization’s productivity and has a direct impact on project costs.

The Top Delivery Solution

Years ago, Océ added a top delivery unit to their toner-based printers. This was some pretty smart engineering for plan sets with less than about 50 pages. If you’ve used an Océ Plotwave or Colorwave printer, you’re familiar with how the prints are kept in pretty good order. However, as you’ve probably experienced, the delivery unit has minimum control of prints and they frequently have a slight collision within the set that causes the once-organized plans to turn sideways and create a mess.

HP eventually took a queue from Océ and engineered their own version of a top-delivery unit for their T-Series WorkGroup Plotters, i.e. T930, T1530, T3500 MFP.

HP enhanced the top delivery unit though, with a tension rack that keeps the set flat and organized. When the set completes printing, you simply pull the tension rack forward and remove the organized, flat, collated drawings.

The printers also have a flat surface in front of the top delivery unit that lets you review the set, and maybe even add some annotations or markups if needed.

Print away!

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HP PageWide printing technology could very well be the beginning of the end for traditional toner-based print systems.

This article is written to help design professionals understand why HP’s PageWide process is the most transformative innovation in wide format in 20 years.

Feeling the Heat?

Traditional, toner-based LED printers must generate high temperatures as part of the process to adhere the image to the photoreceptor drum.

Ever notice how long it takes for your system to warm up? On average, about 6 minutes. Does your Xerox, Ricoh or KIP system keep your office toasty warm in the winter and uncomfortably hot in the summer?

Some systems run so hot, especially toner-based color printers, that the unit has to cool down for several minutes before paper jams can be cleared.

Air quality should also be considered here. The toner-based process creates ozone emissions. Ever notice a metallic odor when the printer is operating?

HP PageWide printers generate zero heat. A static array of user-replaceable print heads transfer the image instead of a drum.

Why is this important?

Continuous heat on mechanical components causes excessive wear and premature failure. A common repair for toner-based printers is the replacement of a drum by a service technician.

Conversely, with PageWide, the user simply replaces one of the print heads when the printer notifies them to do so.

Because HP PageWide uses no heat, energy consumption is 50% less than toner-based printers. And, you don’t have to wait for the system to cool down to correct a paper jam.

You also don’t have to wait for the system to warm up. Imagine being able to print between 48 and 180 drawings in the six minutes it typically takes for a toner-based printer to print the first page.

In conclusion, HP PageWide technology makes an enormous impact in terms of a healthier office environment, reduced downtime, increased productivity and lower cost of operation.

Print away!

You find yourself at that point when either your current plotter is having too many technical issues or, your business is expanding, and you need to plan for a printer that can help meet the design team's project costs and tight schedules.

It’s especially difficult to step back and try to evaluate what your office really needs when you’re existing plotter is on it’s last leg. Gosh, it’s made it ten years now; can’t it go on just another year?

Too many begin the process by assuming all plotters are basically the same and it's just a matter of finding a low price. Well, if you have 1 or 2 designers or estimators printing only a few plans per week, this may  be the right process for you.

However, if you're in a professional environment, with a minimum of 4 to 6 people printing several plan pages a day, and perhaps 1 or 2 sets of plans per week, then you should be focusing on a WorkGroup printing solution.

Here's what to look for in a WorkGroup Printer

Powerful processing architecture. A beefy processor, at least 64 Gigs of RAM, and a large hard disk drive are necessary to process and quickly print today's large, complex CAD/GIS/PDF files. The addition of an Adobe PDF Print Engine should be considered if more than 30 percent of your printing consists of PDF files. As a side note, make sure you flatten or optimize your PDF files to make them print-ready.

Unattended printing. This means you can stay at your desk and stay focused on your work instead of babysitting the plotter.

For unattended printing, the plotter should hold large, single or dual rolls of paper. Large, as in 300 or 500-foot rolls of 36" or 42" paper. The printed plans should be received on a delivery unit that keeps them stacked flat and organized.

Also, for unattended printing; large ink cartridges that hold at least 300 ml of ink. And, even though they appear to cost more, the bigger the ink cartridge, the lower the price per square foot.

Durability and reliability. A sturdy, metal frame, particularly in the construction of the stand and legs of the printer, keeps the printer stable when it's printing. As for reliability, try not to base your evaluation solely on Internet reviews. Ask others in your industry about the reliability of their printers.

Work closely with a reputable, authorized reseller. In most cases, having a service agreement in place is the key to the long-term reliability of the printer. You may have to pay slightly more for reliability but, consider the alternative. Who can afford downtime?

Productive Scanning capabilities. A scanner is a great option to consider for capturing as-builts, archiving old prints and making copies. A workgroup scanner should be able to scan at least 6 ips (inches-per-second), have batch scanning and renaming, as well as templates for scanning and copying various media conditions. The ability to create multi-page PDFs is also very important for a productive workflow.

Security. Given the challenges we face with keeping intruders from accessing our networks, this should probably be listed first. An encrypted hard drive and a range of security protocols keeps your data safe and intruders out.

A great example of a Wide Format WorkGroup Printer is the HP DesignJet T3500ps MFP. Check out the video below.

Just when you think there isn’t a whole lot more that can be done to make wide format printers truly more productive, BAM! – 

If you work with maps or do a lot of large format posters and prints on specialty media, you’re probably no stranger to the rotary trimmer. The one in our print room was “customized” with a big light, clamps, and pen marks. Ever finish trimming a big print that took most of the morning to print and trim, only to find a scratch or wrinkle that makes it worthless? Frustrating to say the least. It can also be very costly.

Speaking of costs, just think of the time you spend trimming borders and cutting maps to various sizes for field work. What’s that time worth to you? I’d rather be in the field getting work done than wasting time preparing to go out in the field.

If you’re curious to see how this works, check out the 1-minute video here: VT.

HP DesignJet Z6 / Z9+ HDNA Printhead  

Not only did HP get smart by adding a vertical trimmer to the Z6 and Z9, they also increased the  precision and image quality by employing their High Def Nozzle Architecture (HDNA) in this pair of printers. They did this with HP PageWide XL and their web presses too.

Briefly, the technology behind HDNA, is to deliver 2400 nozzles per inch and dual drop weight per color.

For the end user, it means improved image grain, smoother gray transitions and finer detail. Who doesn’t want that?

Faster processing architecture

One more thing I have to say about the new Z6 after using it for a few weeks; the speed at which the first page out is noticeably much improved over previous graphics printers. I think the combination of the new Adobe PDF Print Engine, which performs like an internal RIP, and the beefy processor, are what contribute to releasing the print from your computer and getting it to the printer so fast.

Well done, HP.

According to Benjamin Moore “Gray is undoubtedly one of the most popular paint choices these days. And, with a wide variety of depths and undertones to choose from, it’s easy to see why gray has surpassed beige as the most popular neutral.”

As with most things, this got me thinking about wide format printing, and how gray plays such an important role in wide format architectural designs and construction plans.

I was listening to a panel discussion of reprographers recently as they answered questions about the production-level, color wide format printers they’ve invested in recently. When asked about their typical clients, all responded with “AEC Firms.” No big surprise there. What was interesting however, was their description of the type of printing they were doing for AEC. Several said they were using their color printers for printing monochrome plan sets. Not black & white monochrome though. They were talking grayscale.

You see, unlike toner-based, black & white printers that create levels of gray by adjusting the contrast for black ink, the color printers actually print true gray as a color. And, true neutral gray is one of the toughest colors to achieve because it uses all four colors on a printer, and they have to be perfectly balanced.

What you end up with is, smooth transitions in shaded areas, distinctive shadows, and  realistic grayscale isotropic images that leap off the page.

Best Practices for printing grayscale

It starts with the printer of course. While all color printers can produce various levels of gray, they can’t all achieve smooth gradations between light and dark areas. Ink Jet technology is proven to be your best for it’s ability to print true neutral grays.

Select the right media. Most printers can now print on inexpensive, 20lb bond paper. It’s just fine for sets of construction plans. But, if your intended audience is more on the project executive level, step up to a good coated, 24lb paper. If your intent is to produce a grayscale rendering for presentation, a matte poly film is one of my current favorites.

Make test prints on the plotter in your office. But, don’t expect the plan sets on the production printer to precisely match the test prints. Office printers typically have 5 or more inks, while production printers only have 4 (CMYK).

And, as always, flatten or optimize your PDF files with software such as Acrobat Pro or Bluebeam before you print. This step reduces errors and speeds up processing time.

The advantages of printing in grayscale

There are at least 2 big benefits of printing true neutral grayscale instead of traditional black & white.

The first is really the same reason so many are now printing construction plans with color; it reduces errors and allows a team to more easily understand the sections of a plan for which they are responsible. It’s a simple way to reduce the project costs and schedule overruns attributed to errors and waste.

The other reason is, when done right, grayscale is visually appealing. Presenting a set of  build plans to the project owner or executive team that best demonstrates the concept or design intent is easier to review for approval or changes.

So, as you evaluate your next production printer, try looking beyond traditional black and white toner devices and check out what a color printer can do for you; especially now that the cost per print for color or grayscale is the same as black and white.

The standard file format that’s both print-ready and secure for collaboration is, of course Adobe PDF (portable document format). Very few design professionals continue to use native CAD files for printing or sharing due to security concerns and software required to print and view correctly; even more so when you consider viewing tools such as tablets and iPads.