E Size Plotter/Scanner Needed

[madcadder]

Our HP plotter is becoming too small, we need a scanner, some raster to vector would be nice.

Anyway, I have been asked to source a new Plotter/Scanner or Plotter and Scanner.
I've mainly used HP; toss in a little Oce and Kip experience, but not enough to know what I need to look for.

So, I'm open to recommendations. Will only will be doing B/W plotting and scanning. Up to E Size. I'm the only one that Plots, but up to 6 might need to scan drawings to store on the server. One of our suppliers mentioned Xerox...

[cdatechguy]

The Oce is nice, but is very heavy...so if you are placing it on an upper level and you don't have an elevator I highly recommend getting furniture users (speak from experience on that one)

Currently using a Xerox 510dp and it has E-size and scan capability and it works rather well. I kinda miss the Oce since it seemed to work a bit easier, but I am coming around to the Xerox.

[Ken Cover]

We use the Oce' TDS600 with scanner. It is an incredible machine. We do a ton of printing and it seems to handle everything we give it.

[sgoodmansen]

We recently got a xerox 6204. I've been using HPs for years and there were some quirks to work out with the xerox. For instance it only prints the size paper you have selected. The old trick of telling HP to print a half-size on a full-size sheet and letting the printer autotrim is gone. If you select a sheet size that it doesn't have paper for it beeps at you indignantly until you cancel it.

The nice thing about the xerox is the double rolls, the speed it prints and the finer quality of linework that comes off of it. We still keep the HP around, but just when we want to do color.

[GreyHippo]

My company bought a Lanier LW324. It is a wide format digital B/W copier, printer and scanner. It costs around $14,000. I would NOT recommend this to other people because it is always messing up the automatic paper stacker and I have had the waste toner bottle emptied two times and you have to have a service guy come and clean it out. It will probably plot out 4 drawings a minute but the output paper tray only holds 40 or so sheets of paper, so if you have a large number of sheets in a project you have to keep going back to it to take out the finished prints.

[irneb]

We're looking for an upgrade to this. Our existing Oce TDS600 with B/W scanner's about 5 years old and Oce don't want to continue the service contract. Have been looking at their products, but found other brands give much the same (if not better) performance at lower / similar cost.

The TDS600 is just at the limit of our requirements (about 8 D sizes per minute). Unfortunately due to overuse the printer's starting to wear out. We have to call the tech. about twice weekly. That's just not on! I like its ease of use a lot ... that is until it breaks down.

So we've been looking at the other brands, in particular: Xerox XWF 510dp; Xerox XWP 6030; Xerox 721p; KIP 5000 / 7000 / 8000. I like the idea of the "very" fast printing on the Xerox 721 and KIP 8000 (22 D sizes / min) - but of course pricy!!

Has anyone got any info regarding independent reviews about these. Or if you've got good / bad comments about any. Or some other's which you can recommend?

[Ken Cover]

Have you looked at a TDS800. They run up to 18 D's per minute. How many sq. ft. are you doing per month?

We had a xerox previously and the quality of the prints (in my opinion) are not as crisp and clean, especially after running a few thousand prints. If you run a large amount of prints, the Oce would be your best bet.

I recently spoke with the salesman that sold us ours. He is now working for Xerox and he said that he just wanted to sell me a scanner because the Xerox really "does not compare with Oce". I would suggest finding a good reseller that will take care of you. I live in Columbus, Ohio and use Franklin Imaging. They have been a great source for our service and supplies.

[irneb]

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I'm in Johannesburg South Africa - so I'll have to look at other suppliers.

On the page size per month - it's about 2000xA0 per month (i.e. 2000sqm = 21527sq.ft). While that's supposed to be inside all these plotter's usage range, the problem comes in that it's not a smooth curve of so many per month / 4 = so many per week / 5 = so many per day ... etc. It's more like there's a deadline & you need 50 to 200 prints within an hour. Now if someone else is printing at the same time - a 4 E size / minute just don't cut it! And if the thing has any hassles - well you can guess the swearwords coming out of the printer room!

So yes - we're looking at any and all brands now (including Oce). Due to some bad service from them, we're a bit sceptical about going back. Xerox seems to have decent service here, although KIP doesn't really.