I will soon be setting up a small office and we will be needing a 36" plotter. I am looking for recommendations for a good plotter that works well with ArcGIS. Speed is not important as long as I can produce good maps for field work and analysis. (Budget = < $5,000 CAD)
[GIS] a good plotter that works well with ArcMap
arcgis-desktopprinting
Best Answer
For the last few years we've standardized on the Epson 4880 (17"), 7800 (24"), 7900 (24"), and 9900 (42") series printers. Before that we standardized on the the HP designjet 2500cp, 500, 1055cm and 5500ps.
Epson is great for cross printer colour fidelity. Changing paper is smooth and easy, though the 4880 is more finnicky than it's bigger cousins. I prefer the Epson driver dialogs and configuration to HP. Engineering on the 24" and larger printers is solid: metal where it should be (plastic on plastic wears faster).
We loved the Designjets for a long time, a decade. However in the late 1990's they started manufacturing with more plastic and less metal and we ran into more and more problems. For our smaller printing needs we tried both the Designjet 120 and 130nr; when it got to the point where we were spending 2 hours of fiddling and maintenance for every 1 hour of printing we threw them out and switched to Epson across the board. HP tech suport started to go downhill at the same time which contributed to the decision. The final enticement to Epson was being able to take a single PDF and get near identical results across all devices, something we were never able to achieve with HP (and we tried hard).
Epson is expensive to fix, get the extended warranty. They don't make it easy for repair shops to get parts and it's harder to replace individual components. They're also expensive to run, Epson Inc. makes money on consumables not the printers themselves.
HP's are easier to work on and easier to get parts. Their ink carts seem to last longer, but that's just an impression, I haven't calculated it out. Get the UV inks, the dye inks fade even when not in direct sunlight in 6 months to a year (depending on conditions); Epson inks are pigment based and don't fade anywhere near as quickly.
My favourite plotter of all time is the 1055cm. I'd still use it today if it had non-fading ink and the improved resolution of today's devices. My favourite feature is the ability to feed a cut sheet without unloading the roll. I've no idea why HP didn't carry this ability forward.
For HP you don't need the postscript option if your workflow is to create PDFs and then print from those. This will shave a fair bit off the purchase price.
The best general purpose Epson is the 7800, sadly now discontinued. It doesn't use too many inks (8 rather than the 11 of the x900's) and we haven't needed to repair any of the 6 we have in service (not so the x900's).
In summary, I'm not entirely sure we made the right decision to standardize on Epson, chiefly because of the repair costs, but neither do I really think we made the wrong one. Both companies make good hardware for printing maps. If you're only going to have one printer and print mostly maps (as opposed to photos and other highly saturated designs) I lean to HP.