Is anyone using Epson Plotters?

[Kevin]

Most of the comments in this forum are about HP ploters and Epson desktop printers. I do not see anything about the large format Epson Plotters.

Is this lack of talk because everyone is happy with them or because no one is using them?

I would like to hear from anyone who has some experience with the 24" wide and wider Epson Plotters.

[Kurt Magness]

I just purchased a epson 9600 plotter and it seems to work fine with vectorworks. They only have a OS 9 driver now but say they will be comming out with a OS X driver soon. Gimp print has a OS X driver but I have not used it yet. The machine itself is very quiet and easy to load. more stylish than HPs. and the best part is the software driver does not need to be Postscript or require a RIP although you can purchase one. i got a epson network card for it also. I needed to have pigmented inks for my art work projects, thats why I got it. HP told me I needed to have 2 ink sets, dye inks for cad and pigmented inks for art and the cheapest machine was the 5000 model, postscript required for macs, costing $14,000 dollars versus the epson 9600 for $5000 dollars, The epson dealer said the pigment inks would be fine for cad and they seem to work fine . ink sets for the epson costs $75 x 7 colors = $525. HP costs $1200 for 6 colors abet they are larger size (400ml vs 250 ml). The newer pigmented inks for the epson are called ultrachrome and supossedly are much better than the previous archival inks which I guess had a bad rep for fading.

[Kevin]

Hi Kurt;

Congratulations on your purchase and thanks for the info. I hope that as you use your new machine, you can update us. I have always liked HP products but their lousy software has led me to start looking elsewhere. Why did you choose the 9600 over the 7600?

Did you ever get your HP 455CA to work with Gimp Print? It has been about a month now since I started using Gimp Print and I have not looked back.

[Kurt Magness]

Keven:

I got the 9600 because I needed wider sheets than 24". It has beautiful output for my artwork and photos. The thing is quite big however compared to my HP455 D size. I got gimp print to work ok with the HP 455. I found out the "no pages found" error I was getting was because of a corrupted font I was using. The sheet cutter cutting short of 36" I solved by just making a line at the end of the sheet so now it cuts a full D size instead of cutting at the last image. It actually is kind of nice to save paper when you need a test plot or such. It prints a little light in B/W mode but in color it seems fine. Gimp recommended to increase the density also for the too light black problem. I guess these gimp issues are pretty minor considering the alternatives (xrip or staying in OS9). I do miss queing up a lot of drawings as I used to do with the HP Rip in OS 9.

Kurt