CAD Plotters

[MikeRobinson]

I work for a UK based company. We are currently evaluating our CAD plotters, due to the lease ending that we have from the hire company. We have a OCE TCS 500 plotter, which is fairly quick - 5mins 30 to plot an A0 Complicated Line Drawing With a Dozen Viewports - Timed from pressing send at the plotter interface to final cut drawing (From Roll). We also have a HP Designjet 800 with a plot time of 8mins 40 for the same criteria as listed above.

We are happy with the speed of the OCE plotter, but not the quality. We are also happy with the Quality of the HP Designjet, but not the speed.

Is there anyone out there that can reccommend a CAD plotter that wil give us both speed and quality, without costing the earth.

We have been offered an OCE Colorwave 300 - Anyone Any Experince of this plotter?

[Wanderer]

I work for a UK based company. We are currently evaluating our CAD plotters, due to the lease ending that we have from the hire company. We have a OCE TCS 500 plotter, which is fairly quick - 5mins 30 to plot an A0 Complicated Line Drawing With a Dozen Viewports - Timed from pressing send at the plotter interface to final cut drawing (From Roll). We also have a HP Designjet 800 with a plot time of 8mins 40 for the same criteria as listed above.

We are happy with the speed of the OCE plotter, but not the quality. We are also happy with the Quality of the HP Designjet, but not the speed.

Is there anyone out there that can reccommend a CAD plotter that wil give us both speed and quality, without costing the earth.

We have been offered an OCE Colorwave 300 - Anyone Any Experince of this plotter?

I'm going to move this from the AutoCAD General forum to the Hardware forum, as I believe it will be better served here.

Cheers.

[sinc]

We have a OCE TCS 500 plotter, which is fairly quick - 5mins 30 to plot an A0 Complicated Line Drawing With a Dozen Viewports - Timed from pressing send at the plotter interface to final cut drawing (From Roll). We also have a HP Designjet 800 with a plot time of 8mins 40 for the same criteria as listed above.

We used to have an HP DJ800, several years ago... We replaced it a few years back with a Canon iPF700. We got similar-quality prints, but in about 1/4 the time. Then about 1-1/2 years ago we moved the iPF700 to our other office, and got a CanoniPF750 for our main office. That one auto-loads paper, and prints about twice as fast as the iPF700. Not to mention the print drivers for both machines take virtually no time, while the print drivers for the HP DJ800 take a good 30-60 seconds of "thinking time" before we get any indication that a print will happen.

In other words, I have no experience with the Oce printers, but the Canon iPF-750 has been worlds upon worlds better than the HP DJ800 for us. No comparison, really.

[richard.turner.uk323103]

Hi Mike

I am the Marketing Manager for Wide Format Printing Systems at Océ and would be happy to answer any questions you might have.

The Océ ColorWave300 will be very similar in terms of speed and quality to the TCS500 you already have, although it has some significant improvements in terms of size (now a single footprint system), print handling (with a on top stacking system) and some new submission tools.

If you are looking for a quality improvement (and maintaining/improving speed) then take a look at one of the following systems:

http://www.oce.co.uk/products/colorwave600/default.aspx

http://www.oce.co.uk/products/canon-...color-printing

Hope this helps. Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on richard.turner@oce.com. Maybe we can provide you with some opinions from other users in a similar market space?

thanks

Rich

[Liamnacuac]

Oce bought Canon plotters, by the way.
We just installed two TDS 750 and two scanners, one color the other B&W. This is in conjunction with an existing 600 Colorwave we already have in service. Although we are currently applying some customization to the software for these two new machines, and aren't currently online with them, their plotting performance in testing has been good. Oce sales has been gracious and patient with our process, so Kudos for their sales staff. I would recommend going that way, as you already have experience with the Canon products, they will be able to find a solution at a competitive price.

[rkmcswain]

We are happy with the speed of the OCE plotter, but not the quality. We are also happy with the Quality of the HP Designjet, but not the speed.

Is there anyone out there that can reccommend a CAD plotter that wil give us both speed and quality, without costing the earth.

What is your actual budget?
Are you mostly printing B/W line drawings?
How important is color?

[Liamnacuac]

Also, what is your footage, i.e. plots per minute or feet per minute..

What is your actual budget?
Are you mostly printing B/W line drawings?
How important is color?

[Liamnacuac]

Speaking of OCE TDS 750's, anyone out there using one? I have a technical question about plotting .plt files..

[Wanderer]

I work for a UK based company. We are currently evaluating our CAD plotters, due to the lease ending that we have from the hire company. We have a OCE TCS 500 plotter, which is fairly quick - 5mins 30 to plot an A0 Complicated Line Drawing With a Dozen Viewports - Timed from pressing send at the plotter interface to final cut drawing (From Roll). We also have a HP Designjet 800 with a plot time of 8mins 40 for the same criteria as listed above.

We are happy with the speed of the OCE plotter, but not the quality. We are also happy with the Quality of the HP Designjet, but not the speed.

Is there anyone out there that can reccommend a CAD plotter that wil give us both speed and quality, without costing the earth.

We have been offered an OCE Colorwave 300 - Anyone Any Experince of this plotter?

I've never tried an Oce' plotter, but, I must say that our Oce' copier has been going strong for longer than I have been here (so, at least 12 years, maybe 14).
We'd pretty much only owned the HP DesignJet plotters, but, the last two purchased were on a pretty tight budget and I went with the Canon iPFs (I think the 750s). They're serving remote workstations, so, I don't see them often, but, I can say that they print much faster than our DesignJets and I haven't had any trouble calls on them yet.
The HP's aren't much maintenance long-term, but, I haven't had the Canon's long enough to form an opinion yet.

[Wonder Women]

Go with the Cannon be careful of the scanner. The software would knock it off line. I would spend hours trying dealing with the tech, getting it back online, all for the need of 2 scans a month.

the Oce is really fast and is always broken. the supplies are really expensive to.