New Plotter? Is HP the only thing out there?

[jkramer]

Is HP the only thing out there? Does anyone buy other brands?

We are plotter shopping. We have an HP T790 and I hate it. It doesn't work correctly for everyone and it's so hard to update drivers (at our company), share page set ups among divisions and get everyone up to speed, etc.

I need a suggestion of something 'fool proof'. We print our technical drawings in color/BW, don't print too much of photos or sales images, but maybe a couple times a year. I want two loaded roll sizes and a built-in scanner would be nice. 36" or more in page width is okay. I want to be able to use larger rolls of paper than we use, more like 300' if possible.

(I don't know about budget, but would be nice if it's around $10K. Don't want to ask for too much.)

Thanks for the help.

[Wanderer]

Is HP the only thing out there? Does anyone buy other brands?

We are plotter shopping. We have an HP T790 and I hate it. It doesn't work correctly for everyone and it's so hard to update drivers (at our company), share page set ups among divisions and get everyone up to speed, etc.

I need a suggestion of something 'fool proof'. We print our technical drawings in color/BW, don't print too much of photos or sales images, but maybe a couple times a year. I want two loaded roll sizes and a built-in scanner would be nice. 36" or more in page width is okay. I want to be able to use larger rolls of paper than we use, more like 300' if possible.

(I don't know about budget, but would be nice if it's around $10K. Don't want to ask for too much.)

Thanks for the help.

I've never used a KIP, but, at the tail end of my last job, my budgets were pretty sparse so I added two Oce's to my usual HPs.
Our printing volume dropped off sharply at about that time, though, so I can't really say whether they performed as well as the HPs I was used to.

[rkmcswain]

I think $10k is going to get you something like the HP T2530 (or a comparable model from another vendor like Oce).

The one thing you didn't mention is how much print volume you expect to run.

Is it like 20 sq. ft./day (5,000 sq .ft./year)
Or more like 600 sq. ft./day (150,000 sq. ft./year)

The HP PAGEWIDEs might be a better solution, but I doubt you can touch one for $10k.

[BlackBox]

After a few years of holding back from Office Space-like 'printer moments' with our HP Designjet T7100 (which HP later replaced with an T7200 at no cost), we finally had enough, and HP ate the cost of terminating our lease & paid for return shipping.

Last week we took delivery of a new Oce PlotWave 550 to replace it; instead of leasing, we just purchased it for +/- $23K with delivery, setup, training, Account Console, etc. all bundled in. Our only reason for going with the PlotWave (black & white only) in lieu of the ColorWave model, was purely for print speed... The former is +/- 10 D-Sheets per minute, whereas the latter is the same as the HP Designjet at 2-3 D-Sheets per minute.