Plotter/Printer

[Castos]

Good Day

 

I have the opportunity to get a well looked after HP Designjet T520 at a reasonable price.

My question: Is it worthwhile to get your own printer/plotter or not? I can use it for other purposes as well.

 

Thanks in advance for advice.

[Louie da fly]

I'm not familiar with the model, but if you want to draw plans for your own vessel on AutoCad or a similar drawing software, a good printer would be indispensable. Having checked the specs, this printer prints on either 24 inch (610mm) or 36 inch (914mm) paper paper, which is pretty big. The 24 inch will take A1 paper, and I suppose the 36 inch must take A0. What size is the one you're looking at? It should be suitable for full-size plans for anything up to a pretty large-scale model.

 

Using AutoCad (that's the one I'm familiar with, but I'm sure others would work as well or even better) you could, for example, generate your own plans, side-views, and even your own cross-sections to paste onto wood to make your frames.

 

It all depends on what you want to do with it, but I'd be very happy to have one myself - my printer only prints up to A3 paper (11.7x16.5 inches or 297x420mm) and, for example my 30-odd metre (90 foot) dromon at 1:50 is too big for it to print a side or top view at full size. If you want to make anything 1:50 scale or bigger the T520 sounds good. As I said, not familiar with the model, but HP have a pretty good reputation.

 

Steven

[Castos]

The Printer/Plotter uses roll paper up to 36" wide.  I can get one for $922 here in South Africa.

 

Andre

[Louie da fly]

As I mentioned above, it depends what you want to use it for. That's still quite a large amount of money, even if it's exactly what you want. As I know nothing about the circumstances, I'm not in a position to advise whether or not to get the printer - that's a decision you'll have to make for yourself. In certain uses it'd be very worthwhile, but you know best what you want and whether you'd get enough use out of it to make the purchase worthwhile.

 

For example, if you had an A0 AutoCad drawing and wanted to print it off, it might be much cheaper and more economical to just take it down to a printing works and pay them to make one or more copies at A0. A few bucks instead of $922.

 

Steven