Discussion: 11x17 printer ??

We (MNOC) are looking into buying an 11" x17" printer (inkjet or laser) for printing maps for local meets (rather than laser print at $$ at commercial print houses). Has anyone had good experiences with a 11 x 17 inkjet (with heavy weight 28lb+ paper). Any recommendations? (HP ?). Thanks

Epson R1800 prints on up to 13"×19". I highly recommend it. In my personal opinion, HP has vastly inferior print and paper technology (this opinion has not been helped by some recent ventures of clubs that shall remain unnamed into print-it-yourself terrain).

I've managed to produce decent maps, even for A-meets, with an HP cp1700. However, I agree with Vlad, Epson ink is far better. If I was getting a new printer, I'd go with them.

Vlad and Eric, thanks for the valuable input from your extensive experience. I am very happy with our existing Epson C84 and its ink system for 8.5 x 11 so the R1800 makes sense for everything 11 x 17 except the most demanding applications (such as fine detailed 1:15000 A meet maps).

Ian - I've printed O maps on both the C84 and R1800. My experience was that, while the R1800 can do a fine job with the right paper and settings, you can still get substantially better quality with a C84 set up in the right way. So don't expect it to be up to those standards. I don't think Epson makes a large format printer equivalent to the C84. Wish they did.

What settings do you tweak on the C84 ? (I usually tweak the OCAD colors to get brown darker more differentiated from magenta )

Yes, I tweaked the brown a bit. In terms of sharpness of the pure colors (eg black), I got the best results on the C84 with a 'premium' inkjet paper (whiter, heavier, uncoated, and still pretty cheap), and printer settings 'photo quality' and 'plain paper'. I could only get good results from the R1800 with Epson coated photo quality paper. There may be some combination of cheaper paper/settings that works well!

I agree with all that Andy said, except that I do not notice a difference in quality between the output of the C88 (I don't have a C84) and the R1800 on the coated photo quality paper. There is a substantial difference in color between the C80s and the R1800. pi has played with the R1800 colors a lot.

I have an Ocad9 file for the R1800 in which the color settings have been tuned to match the offset printed IOF reference color chart. Send me an email if you want it!

The tuned settings are actually not greatly different from the default ocad setting for this printer, but it certainly helps.

I went through the same tuning process for the HP2600 Laser and that really made a huge difference for the colors!

Hi
I am surprised you are wanting to purchase a printer. For the outlay of the printer and the printing costs by and large you pay a lot more and if the printer breaks you have to get it serviced.

Here in NZ I only know of one club with a printer and the other 15 or so clubs print at a print shop. We pay $1.50NZ per A3 (297x420mm) which is very reasonable and cheaper and faster than bying and printing it yourself

If you are intent I would by a laser printer. Inkjet ink can run (not all though) and is not as good quality, and takes longer to print.

I understand you may want to reduce the amount of wastage but we have found we can estimate the numbers of maps to be printer in advance

oh yes forgot inches A3 (297x420mm) is around the size of 11x17 inches

It seems like we have more of a do-it-yourself ethos here in America. And seem to appreciate the convenience of having their own printer.

I can print 11x17 inkjet on very high quality paper for around $.75. The resulting map will by significantly higher quality than any toner-based (i.e., laser) product and won't be too far behind digital offset (true 5-color offset is still in a class by itself). I'd only have to produce 1000 such maps to cover the cost of the printer. I've produced at least twice that number since buying the printer three years ago.

As for time, yes it's slow. But, since it just churns away in my basement, it is actually less time consuming than going to a print shop.

We tried lots of print shops here in Vancouver, but the quality was always varying and often a disappointment. I got tired of putting on events on crappy looking maps! For me, what matters most is not the cost, it's the quality of the print. The ink jet is not much more expensive per printed paper, it gives good quality and I can tune the color setting to match the mapping standard. As Eric is saying, the end result is not too far behind offset. We bag our maps in plastic (because it rains here alot), so that the ink can run is a no-issue.

Here in the States, we don't service it if it's broken. We send it off to a Chinese landfill and procure a new one.

I´m not very much into this type of technical stuff myself, but found this link with some material presented at the Norwegian O gala this past weekend.
I can´t evaluate if this will be of any help in this particular question, but it compares the printing quality of a number of different printers - a study made by Håvard Tveite, former Norwegian elite runner (now head of the Norwegian map commission).