A plotter is a printing device for large format printing. It can print images from A2 size and above. Plotters are quite expensive equipment, consumables for which are also not cheap, so they are used only for professional purposes. They can be seen in geographic information companies, architectural and advertising workshops. The technical characteristics of plotters are different, so when choosing, you must take into account the requirements for printing materials.
Instructions
Step 1
First of all, decide on the required format. The larger the carriage of the plotter, the larger the format of the image can be printed on it. But the price here is in direct proportion - it will also be higher.
Step 2
The purpose of plotters is also different - for printing full-color raster images and photographs, and for engineering and geoinformation purposes, when printing vector images. The price of plotters of the second type is lower.
Step 3
Plotters use two printing technologies - piezo and thermal inkjet. Each of them has its own pros and cons. Basically, all manufacturers use the thermal inkjet printing method, only Epson plotters implement the piezoelectric method. The temperature jet method allows you to increase the printing speed, but the formation of satellite droplets, which are the main cause of the formation of "ink fog", does not allow achieving high resolution and degrades the quality of color reproduction. The piezoelectric method slows down the printing speed, but allows you to achieve high image quality - up to 5760 dpi.
Step 4
Pay attention to the consumables that the manufacturer offers, because in the end the quality largely depends on them. Almost all manufacturers now use pigment rather than water-soluble paints, which makes it possible to increase ink resistance to sunlight, as well as preserve parameters such as color gamut and gloss uniformity. Select the roll paper feed method. Roll paper is 60-70% cheaper than sheets. In addition, plotters have the ability to automatically crop the image. Therefore, there is no problem to cut the roll when printing on the sheets of the desired length.
Step 5
The print speed for all plotters depends on the print quality, which, in turn, depends on the number of passes of the print head. The higher the image quality you need, the slower the print speed will be.
