A0 plotters - good place to buy?
 

Am gonna have to bite the bullet and buy an A0 plotter for my CAD work. Given that these are just a big printer I am gobsmacked at the cost.

Two questions for those of you who are in the know:
1) Which is a good reputable make. HP? Epson
2) Best place to buy from offering good discounts
3) Worth buying second hand?

Long shot this one cos there can't be many peeps on here even know what one is let alone use one, but you lot have never failed me before so here goes!

Are you sure you need to go A0? We use Xerox wide format 510's here which I would imagine are high volume and I suspect mega-expensive, but we don't do much A0 plotting - most clients prefer A1 simply for handling the size of the plot..
In smaller outfits I've used HP plotters before and found them to be pretty good

Cheers
Martin

eBay???

Only ever used HP bubble jets and seemed pretty good so long as you remember to change cartridges before a big run (overnight) of plots.

Firstly if you can buy a good secondhand HP 750C+ these are superb if a bit old. I have 4 on the go, they were bought back in 1996 onwards and churn out drawings day in day out. they get a service once a year (around 400 quid) and they keep on going.
Have replaced some of these with OCE printers and another couple of later HP's and none have been as reliable or cheap to run.
I think the old 750C+ was a tad over engineered as no one was buying the replacements, and HP were offering a good trade in to get them out of companies and crush them i think.
Infact i may be able to find out if we are selling a dusty 750 thats come back from site cheap

Would be very interested in talking to you if you have!

Could probably cope with A1 having reviewed size of recent plots.

HP 750 rings a bell, remember using them at various places, good quality output as I recall as well

Ok leave it with me i will know by tue / wed.
I have a A1 (takes the 2' rolls) and feeder and legs which may be more suitable.
They are all working but i would suggest a service. i use jetware in manchester, they will sub it out i guess to a more local co if they cant come out themselves.
hope that helps, they are not exactly the quickest printers but quality is good and ink is cheap

Not many people want A0 plots these days.

In fact most customers want your drawing electronically; it a hard job fobbing them off with pdf's or summat!

There could be issues with drivers though, if you use an old plotter. Last place I worked never did plot AutoCAD 2005 properly, line thicknesses were all over the place. IT guys blamed it on the ageing plotter.

We've got an HP1050c that gets some serious use but has been almost 100% reliable. Plots in colour as well (i think i did a bike pic for you on it John?). We hardly ever plot at A0 but we sometimes do get drawings in from consultants (typically M&E) who will insist on using A0 drawing sheets.

Get an HP one. They are fantastic pieces of kit, and the people who work for HP are truly wonderful human beings :D

Guess who I work for - Buy HP, help my stock options keep rising and support my bling habit

Sorry to go slightly off topic but is it likely that I'll be able to sell my A0 drawing board on a fully adjustable stand ? Realise it is less likely with all this CAD stuff around but surely someone still uses them ?

I buy their baked beans and tomato ketchup...awesome !!!!

I disposed of mine at the local tip a few months ago, had a quick scan on ebay and there didn't seem to be a huge amount of interest in graphite workstations

I've seen this recently with a HP1050 on a Win 2003 print server. The very same plotter was fine printing directly from Win XP. As it doesn't sound like you need/use a print server, you'll probably be ok with a 1050 (not sure about a 750 though).

If you don't get the 750 from crm, drop me a u2u as I know somebody that may be able to help.

I use an old Océ 9400 at work and have trouble with printing from acad 2005. The plotter is reliable as anything and has been going for years, but I have to revert to an earlier acad version to print!

The colour HP printer (HP755) we use has no such issues.

We skipped most of ours - no one wanted them even for free. A few blokes still use them just for sketching though.

I've used an HP Designjet 100 for the last few years: A very reliable A1 colour printer for my needs - fortnightly runs of 30 odd A1 colour architectural drawings. I believe the current version of trhe printer is now the Designjet110.....

Not sure how it would cope with huge amounts of printing, and like all these printers the ink costs are mind numbing........

At the time it was the only A1 printer on the market at a remotely acceptable price......

But, as mentioned above, all my output is now forwarded to clients/consultants/local authorities as PDFs.

Good luck

I use a HP Designjet 430/A1 plotter it replaced a similar but much older HP with fibre tips mounted on a carousel, the difference was awesome so it seems to me that buy the newest you can as the speed and print quality will be better.

We bought ours from a local reseller but since have been buying kit direct from HP.com

Looks like there may be a few on fleabay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HP-Designjet-1... QcmdZViewItem

We use a 750 at work with variable results:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HP-DesignJet-7... QcmdZViewItem

At work we got a Xerox 8830 that houses 3 rolls and does up to A0 in black and white and has a folder to which is very cool, dont know how much they are but this one been with us since i been there and we lease them. Break down now and then but it is doing up to 200 prints in a row sometimes so to be expected:bouncy:

We have a Hp 1050 for colour prints to:smug: