Large format printer or not - that is the question

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Nobby-W

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So, one can get an older-model roll-fed large format printer like a HP T120 or T520 off ebay for a few hundred quid. For some years I've been umm-ing and aahing about this, not because of the cost (you can get secondhand ones quite cheaply), but because of the space they take up. [1] Also moving or disposing of it will be a PITA if I have to move house, which is on the cards sometime this year.

Has anybody actually done this?

What model and size was it - 24", 36", 44"?

If so, what are your experiences with it - what do you do with it and how does it work for you?
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1 - For those on the other side of the pond (or even on the Continent), this matters in the UK as housing bigger than a 'slightly inadequate' gets expensive very quickly.
 
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Must ... Resist ...


At the moment I have a HP M475 multifunction, which has a scanner/photocopy function that's quite useful from time to time. However, official toner for it is disproportionately expensive. It comes to about 12p/page so not too bad if you're only printing occasionally, but it's going to be fairly expensive to use it for proofing.

I've just caved in and bought another old B&W printer; I used to have a LJ5100 until it got bashed around in a house move and broke. The LJ5200 I've just bought will be something like 15 years old but probably goes just fine (Old HPs last for decades and millions of sheets) and you can still get roller kits for them. It was about £260 + shipping. I've got a toner cartridge from the old 5100 that will work with it if the drum hasn't gotten over-exposed due to inadequate storage. The LJ5200 also does A3 and has a duplexer.

I can get some sort of storage unit - cupboards, drawers etc. - that I could park a T120 on; they're relatively compact for a large format printer. It needs about 120cm and maybe 50cm or 60cm deep.
 
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Way back in the 90s my dad was engineering director at a company and I used to do work in their design office in my university holidays. They had an A1-plotter (with actual pens!) that was used for printing engineering drawings. I was allowed to use it periodically and printed some pretty sweet custom Car Wars maps at table-scale.

I will probably look for a printer that can be fed A3 when I upgrade in the near future, but bigger than that would be a pain for reasons of space like you say. A2 would be nice, A1 is probably too big for regular use in real terms.
 
My dad was a naval architect he had a large scale 6 pen plotter. That thing was bizarre. You could have it draw the same drawing and it never drew it the same way twice. He also had a blueprint machine. I never used it for gaming I guess because it never occurred to me. Looking back it would have been pretty awesome sometimes.
 
Hopefully, in the shed... Those things stink!
Nope! Right smack dab in the middle of the office. Ah ammonia my stinky old friend.
 
Nope! Right smack dab in the middle of the office. Ah ammonia my stinky old friend.
Back when I worked as a typesetter I knew a few graphic designer types who had bromide camera darkrooms in their house. There was a time where I briefly considered getting a secondhand one, but the stink of the developer was enough to put me off it. Now one can get A3 scanners relatively cheaply I don't have a use for it.
 
Back when I worked as a typesetter I knew a few graphic designer types who had bromide camera darkrooms in their house. There was a time where I briefly considered getting a secondhand one, but the stink of the developer was enough to put me off it. Now one can get A3 scanners relatively cheaply I don't have a use for it.
At the end of my dad's career he'd moved to doing all prints in 11"x17" (American equivalent to A3)
Everyone just used the drawings in digital form anyway so there wasn't any reason to print bigger.

Years later I recall a Google interview question about plotters and the impact of various pen switching and x and y travel times and how it would change your print algorithm.
I doubt whoever wrote the code for dad's old plotter put any thought into that. I swear they used a random number generator to figure out where to start printing and what elements to switch to.

It was like a cat on cocaine running all over printing random lines.
 
The main thing that has me considering a large format device now is that the maps I've been working on are quite large. Plus, being able to print out a table-sized battle map might also be quite useful. The main strike against it is that it is an impediment to downsizing the house, which is on the agenda because we're in quite an expensive place now.
 
Ultimately, I guess the question is whether there is a local print shop that could do the large format stuff for you occasionally? Therr doesn’t seem to be as many around these days.
 
Ultimately, I guess the question is whether there is a local print shop that could do the large format stuff for you occasionally? Therr doesn’t seem to be as many around these days.
I did look into print shops and it's not out of the question but it is a pain in the arts and not really an optimal solution.

There is a Timpsons and a Snappy Snaps on the main drag that have large photo printers but they are photo grade (i.e. 50 zillion inks on expensive coated paper) and quite expensive - large prints go up to about £60. Proofing cycles on large maps could burn enough money to buy my own large-format printer in fairly short order. I also really only need a four-colour or B&W print so the (not insignificant) extra cost of the photo-quality media is potentially worth saving.

Parking isn't so much an issue as they're next to a large Sainsbury's (supermarket) so if they weren't so expensive I would count them as fairly practical - in fact they're only a 15 minute walk. They other gotcha is that they are not open in the evenings, which is when I would expect to use this the most. There are also places in London close to where I work but that means getting the printout home on the train at rush hour - and they're no cheaper.
 
The main thing that has me considering a large format device now is that the maps I've been working on are quite large. Plus, being able to print out a table-sized battle map might also be quite useful. The main strike against it is that it is an impediment to downsizing the house, which is on the agenda because we're in quite an expensive place now.
Is there a way to get them made online and shipped to you?
 
Is there a way to get them made online and shipped to you?
Yes, I have looked into outfits that do it. It's cheaper than the high street outfits but it's still quite expensive for a single sheet once you include postage, plus there's a turnaround time of several days for the postage options that don't involve expensive urgent courier services. I think bureau services would be OK for printing finished art but not so useful for proofing large works in progress like the city.

My current approach of tiling to A4-sized chunks hasn't worked all that well and is causing as many problems as it's solving, although some of these were related to other first-attempt type mistakes on things I would differently a second time. I may have to unravel the tiling and work on larger chunks, then find a way to tile it after the fact.

My current thoughts are to build it in larger (e.g. A0-A1) sized chunks, keep the text on a separate layer (which it is now). Then generate printable tiles by rendering the background to a lossless bitmap format like TIFF or PNG at 300-400dpi so as not to produce JPEG artefacts; solid colours will compress well with run-length encoding. One can use Imagemagick or some such to auto-generate the individual tiles. The text can be added as an EPS over the top and will thus render crisply.
 
Well one way to deal with it is to apply for a publisher's account on DriveThruRPG. At which point you make a private project and print 12" by 18" posters at $.48 per poster. Yes shipping can be pricey but the trick is that each "project" is a PDF with the posters is on every other page. So if you want 10 posters printed then bundle them up as a single 20 page PDF and the shipping is roughly $6 (60 cents per map). Which is the cost of shipping the maps for Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

Then what I do is using packing tape to combine the maps, which have a generous overlap. If need be I will take the map to a local office store and get it laminated. That what I did for the CSIO map on the left which came in four sections.

Photo_01.JPG
 
Well one way to deal with it is to apply for a publisher's account on DriveThruRPG. At which point you make a private project and print 12" by 18" posters at $.48 per poster. Yes shipping can be pricey but the trick is that each "project" is a PDF with the posters is on every other page. So if you want 10 posters printed then bundle them up as a single 20 page PDF and the shipping is roughly $6 (60 cents per map). Which is the cost of shipping the maps for Wilderlands of High Fantasy.
I think that would be a good way to ship geomorphs or suchlike, and I have thought of that as a publishing medium for maps. I'm really after a solution with a fast turnaround time for proofing. DTRPG is still a week or two for anything that has to ship from the U.S. - I do have a publisher account and did some cards as a prototype once.
 
Be aware of the consumable costs, even if the printer is cheap the consumables are not. The machines are also more sensitive than most consumer printers, and repairs can be costly.
I've had to order the toner and paper for the plotter at work and the costs are significant, as I recall a full set of toner and roll of paper was around $1000.

This may be a larger printer than what you are looking at, the rolls of paper are 3 or 4 feet wide. Still these are quite specialized machines so you can't expect to find the consumables on sale at Staples. They did use the plotter for making maps and it does that well, but a rather large cost in both money and space for the home.


Epson makes some larger than standard printers capable of printing on 11x17 and 13x19 sheets. The printers are $200-ish and use standard Epson inkjet cartridges. Not battlemat on one sheet size but fewer sheets to stick together than the standard 8-1/2x11" and a lot cheaper than a plotter. 13x19 is a bit small to put figures on, but would make a fairly impressive planning map for the players, same if you want to add some props like scrolls and such.

Epson WF7710
 
Be aware of the consumable costs, even if the printer is cheap the consumables are not. The machines are also more sensitive than most consumer printers, and repairs can be costly.
I've had to order the toner and paper for the plotter at work and the costs are significant, as I recall a full set of toner and roll of paper was around $1000.

This may be a larger printer than what you are looking at, the rolls of paper are 3 or 4 feet wide. Still these are quite specialized machines so you can't expect to find the consumables on sale at Staples. They did use the plotter for making maps and it does that well, but a rather large cost in both money and space for the home.


Epson makes some larger than standard printers capable of printing on 11x17 and 13x19 sheets. The printers are $200-ish and use standard Epson inkjet cartridges. Not battlemat on one sheet size but fewer sheets to stick together than the standard 8-1/2x11" and a lot cheaper than a plotter. 13x19 is a bit small to put figures on, but would make a fairly impressive planning map for the players, same if you want to add some props like scrolls and such.

Epson WF7710
Quite interesting - it also has a duplexer. I've also seen A2-sided printers from Epson.
 
Ive used a 17" wide printer for many years now. It works for most every table top map I've needed. Exceptions are not very common. It's portable in comparison, sits on an office desk, the rolls come in every type of paper and the inks last a while. Love it. Epson.
 
Ive used a 17" wide printer for many years now. It works for most every table top map I've needed. Exceptions are not very common. It's portable in comparison, sits on an office desk, the rolls come in every type of paper and the inks last a while. Love it. Epson.
What model is it?
 
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