A plotter printer is a device that plenty of businesses or self-employed individuals are likely to need.
It’s a printer that uses line drawings instead of dots. Once the printer has an image sent to it, a mechanical arm creates the picture on the paper with a plotting pen or pencil. The advantage of using a plotting machine is that it can be far more precise and is therefore brilliant at creating vector graphics.
Architects and engineers are arguably the only sort of professionals, who really need prints as accurate as these. They will use plotting prints for inch-perfect designs of a build. In fact, these professionals need a plotter printer for their drawings mainly because plotter printers can draw straight lines so well. Standard printers that use dots can’t do that with good enough accuracy.
Plotter printers can draw huge images with accuracy and meet industry standards in every way possible. Any architect or engineer worth their salt will print out their designs using one, especially if they’re using high-quality CAD software. It would arguably be a false economy not too.
Why HP Plotters?
Hewlett Packard has always been a big cheese in the printing industry and they have created some popular plotter printers. The most basic of these machines, the HP Designjet120, can be purchased for just over £600 and will provide everything that entry-level CAD technicians need.
It can print with great accuracy to A1 paper size or lower at a 1200 dpi output, more than enough for this size. It is relatively speedy compared to other models too; running at a rate of 40 A1 prints per hour and can store 256MB worth of files.
For the pros
Professional printing businesses will likely to want to invest in some hi-tech plotters and HP has got them covered too. The HP DesignJet T7100, for example is an incredibly impressive machine. It can complete A1-sized prints at a fantastic speed of 165 prints per hour. It covers A0-sized drawings too and features 160 GB of memory. Impressive by anyone’s standards.
Of course, there are plenty of other top-of-the-range plotters to choose from, each with their own specifications and prices to meet anyone’s needs. The top printers typically cost in the region of £6,000 to £10,000.
Who else uses plotter printers?
Photographers or artists sometimes like using printers for their quirky projects. Arts and craft superstars will also occasionally use plotters to print birthday and Christmas cards, invitations and the like.
They tend to use cutting plotters though. Cutting plotters use a small blade instead of pen. You can program them either to score or cut out. Pop-up books can be created with them too! These machines are also sometimes called die-cut machines or vinyl cutters.
The future of plotters?
Although plotter printers aren’t as commonly-used as they were in the past, they still represent an important purchase across a range of artistic and design industries. As things stand, it would appear that HP is amongst the market leaders for this type of product!
