Art Dept Printer - recomendations

[mb2k01]

Hi All,

 

I'm looking for opinions and recommendations!

 

Our Art Department have a Xerox 7845, but are constantly complaining that it is slow to print, as well as struggling with the concept of paper size / types!

They use Apple Macs, and do most of their printing straight from Photoshop with files spooling around the 100mb mark.

 

While we use PaperCut around the rest of the school we have actually resorted to direct IP printing for them to try and speed things up. We've also fiddled with drivers, changed ports, all to little or no difference.

 

Now, don't get me wrong, the IT / Media part of me wants to hammer home the fact they could export to something more appropriate, reduce file size and that would help their issues significantly - but that has been tried to a degree, and doesn't really affect what I'm asking. I'm keen on finding out what others do with their departments.

 

Can everyone share what devices they use and how their Art department view the resource in terms of happiness?

 

Cheers

[unixman_again]

We have a Sharp MX6240 Colour and a Sharp MX2614 Colour which are OK. The 14 is the smaller version of the 40. The only problem with the 40 is that there is one particular paper jam which requires an engineer to deal with, but it's only happened once. Easy to fit supplies and seems robust (we've had it 18 months). We also have a Ricoh Pro C5100s Colour which we say is pants, although (according to our printer company) works well in other schools. We can only get it to print from the bypass tray in landscape, seems to eat supplies like they are going out of style and takes forever to print.

 

All of our printers use PaperCut. The Ricoh is used by the Macs but we didn't have much success getting the Macs to talk to the M$ print server. The Macs could see the printer but often jobs wouldn't print. We've had more success controlling it from the teachers Mac, which means we can't account for it using PaperCut. While not ideal, the graphics teacher doesn't jump up and down as much saying the printer isn't printing, so we are happy(ish).

Edited December 15, 2016 by unixman_again

[mikkydoos]

I improved our graphics printing spooling massively by experimenting with different versions of drivers on our Sharp machines. Might be worth a play at some point.

[bwestlake]

we ended up getting a RICOH SP C440DN as we have the xerox 6500 all around site and they were getting through them after about two months with the amount they printed / page coverage. 2 months in and this one is ok, got it so we only paid for the printer, ink is charged per page and don't pay for the carterages, and it has full warranty on it so if it breaks it is fixed!

[Fazza]

If it was me I would find some specialist printer companies and ask for 2 things: 1) What would they recommend to do the job and 2) Can you have a loan one to try out?

 

Then ask the department if they like it or not and go from there.

[bald_pig]

We have the same Xerox I believe, we told the department to reduce file size or put up with it, as there's nothing faster available, we haven't had a complaint since.

 

As a side note, the main problem we had was with contact sheets, where the students were printing 9-12 20-50Mb pictures on a page, which photoshop doesn't compress!

[mb2k01]

We have the same Xerox I believe, we told the department to reduce file size or put up with it, as there's nothing faster available, we haven't had a complaint since.

 

As a side note, the main problem we had was with contact sheets, where the students were printing 9-12 20-50Mb pictures on a page, which photoshop doesn't compress!

 

That sounds almost identical to us!

See I'm kind of 50/50 on this - my IT and Media side wants to drum home the fact that they should do what you say... but, I also aren't that convinced that it is SO unreasonable of a print job that it should be slow / fail?

 

Does anyone else have this usage scenario? Does their printer(s) cope with these kind of jobs without complaint, or do you go down the hard line of forcing them to compress / do things properly!

[pete]

They print to their own poster-paint be-speckled Bizhub C308. We use PaperCut with postscript drivers.

 

We have discussed getting a refurb large-format printer for final pieces, but I'm waiting on an art teacher contact to divulge where they got theirs from and what it costs to run.

[bald_pig]

That sounds almost identical to us!

See I'm kind of 50/50 on this - my IT and Media side wants to drum home the fact that they should do what you say... but, I also aren't that convinced that it is SO unreasonable of a print job that it should be slow / fail?

 

Does anyone else have this usage scenario? Does their printer(s) cope with these kind of jobs without complaint, or do you go down the hard line of forcing them to compress / do things properly!

 

Just remind them that each page is the size equivalent of a 100 page document, that's more understandable!

[unixman_again]

If it was me I would find some specialist printer companies and ask for 2 things: 1) What would they recommend to do the job and 2) Can you have a loan one to try out?

 

Then ask the department if they like it or not and go from there.

What they recommend and what you get might be two different things. When we changed companies and our miss mash of HPs were replaced with Lexmarks, we ended up with CS748s. These are colour printers but Paper Cut forces black and white. The new company bought a job lot and basically dumped them on us. To be fair, they are quite good printers but somethings urks me that they aren't true black and white. This also causes us some problems with staff :

 

Teacher: "There is a colour printer in our office but I have to send colour jobs to the resources room."

We in IT: "The printer in your office is black and white."

Teacher: "No it isn't, there are colour cartridges in it."

 

Trialing a printer is a good idea but make sure it's a realistic trial. I'd suggest a minimum of a month during term time.

[sonofsanta]

We've got an HP M651 laser in our art room, after complaints that the ink-based PageWide x585 wasn't good enough quality, and they've been perfectly content since. Remarkably colour accurate when measured against a calibrated monitor, I have to say. Apart from an annoying tendency to run out of toner at 1% and stop printing the empty colour whilst insisting it's still fine, it's been a reliable bit of kit this last year.

 

ETA: that's A4, btw; can't work out from the Xerox spec sheet if yours is an A3 printer. A3 equivalent of the HP is the M800 series; we've got the M880z outside our office, same print engine but A3 and with all the scanning gubbins on top. Absolutely marvellous bit of kit, but not especially cheap to purchase. Could probably save a chunk by getting the model without the scanning stuff.

Edited December 16, 2016 by sonofsanta