Printing Full Size Plans

[pkinneb]

I would like to make some Morley bar stools and wondering if anyone has used the "full Size" or "Large print" pdf's on the Guild site to have full size prints done somewhere. If you have what do I need to do just save the file to a thumb drive? Who can print them Kinko's? Thanks!

[Chet]

I did the Morris Chair with my own printer.  You have to have the printer default to pdf printing.  When printing from pdf you will get a size option for poster, when you print it out each page will have witness marks for alignment with each other.

But

To answer you real question, you load it to a thumb drive, Kinko's, Office Depot and I think even places like UPS stores can do it.

[wtnhighlander]

Yeah, in my town, the FedEx office place, formerly Kinko's, has large format printers. PDF on a USB device or your phone, and you are good to go.

[legenddc]

There's lots of print shops all around. MinuteMan press is around in a lot of areas too. Local places are probably cheaper than FedEx, Office Depot, etc. Most places will just have you email them the file.

[JohnG]

Make sure there’s a known dimension on the print that you can check with a ruler before you pay. I’ve had several chain printing shops fail to actually print at 100% on large format prints. 

[Chestnut]

When I did the Morris chair the full size template drawings were no longer available.

Any place with a 36" or 48" printer should be able to print them. I agree make sure they aren't printing with a scale. From a PDF there should always be an actual size scale option. Make sure they know that needs to be selected. Or tell them to set the scale to 100%. Plotters are typically very accurate on scale, more so than woodworkers probably need them to be.

[BillyJack]

When I wanted to reprint the designs from the router crafter and because they were old and starting to tear, they said it would have to be on a memory card, etc.

 

[Ronn W]

I agree.  Any print shop with a large scale printer can print your PDF file.  I did it for years with my cadd  drawings.

[wtnhighlander]

@BillyJack, most of those places can scan an existing paper drawing and make a copy, scaling it up or down if needed.

[BillyJack]

On 2/11/2022 at 5:56 AM, wtnhighlander said:

@BillyJack, most of those places can scan an existing paper drawing and make a copy, scaling it up or down if needed.

They said they could try, but most are just employees trying to be helpful. I was able to fold it and get accurate prints off my printer. I just have to paste them together..

Remember because a company like UPS offers a service, doesn't mean you have computer pros back there.lol

[legenddc]

That's why I suggested a real print shop. They know what they're doing and can make sure it's correct. Pre-covid I used to get a thousands of pages printed for work multiple times a year without any issue.

You could check your local libraries too. Some of them might have larger printers. You may still need to print off multiple pages and tape them together for a large plan, but less pages to handle compared to doing it at home.

[BillyJack]

A real print shop isn't going to be cheap.

[sjeff70]

I thought a printer plotter would be less expensive by now but I see they are still fairly expensive.  About $2000 for a plotter that will give you a 2 X 3 ft sheet.  These have never been in mainstream consumer demand and probably not a fun machine to maintain monetarily. 

[JohnG]

On 2/11/2022 at 11:03 AM, BillyJack said:

A real print shop isn't going to be cheap.

Not necessarily. I’ve used local print shops that were comparable to the cost at Staples/Fedex Office and the experienced employees were able to get the print right on their first try, unlike the others.

On 2/12/2022 at 1:39 PM, sjeff70 said:

I thought a printer plotter would be less expensive by now but I see they are still fairly expensive.  About $2000 for a plotter that will give you a 2 X 3 ft sheet.  These have never been in mainstream consumer demand and probably not a fun machine to maintain monetarily. 

Occasionally you can find one at a county surplus auction for a decent price. Maintenance isn’t always much different than typical printers, depending on what type you get. 

[sjeff70]

On 2/12/2022 at 2:35 PM, JohnG said:

Not necessarily. I’ve used local print shops that were comparable to the cost at Staples/Fedex Office and the experienced employees were able to get the print right on their first try, unlike the others.

Occasionally you can find one at a county surplus auction for a decent price. Maintenance isn’t always much different than typical printers, depending on what type you get. 

Plotters aren't throw away printers so I was curious. The first 4 places I contacted that repair plotters send technicians out to your house.  Two of the companies sounded like they're taking calls in India and China.  These things are investments like big power tools. You better buy a good one!  

[Chestnut]

On 2/12/2022 at 12:39 PM, sjeff70 said:

About $2000 for a plotter that will give you a 2 X 3 ft sheet.  These have never been in mainstream consumer demand and probably not a fun machine to maintain monetarily. 

That's dirt cheap. Our new plotter at work was $30,000. It's really cool though because it uses plastic instead of toner or ink. It literally melts the plastic and blasts it on the paper. They have a special vinyl roll that you can make weather proof prints with the thing. That said the price is coming down big time, this one is half what the previous machine cost.

[wtnhighlander]

In my previous job at a garment factory, we had 2 plotters that did a 72" x 500' continuous roll print. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $125k, but that was 35 years ago. That particular model used special paper that passed over a row of tiny electrical contacts that imparted an electrical charge everywhere a pixel of toner was to go. The toner was suspended in a liquid solution that the charged paper passed through after the print head.  We also had a mechanical X / Y flatbed plotter that drew with a ball-point pen on plain paper (72" x 500'), and later an inkjet plotter with 5 print heads, all black, also 72" x 500'.  All of those machine ran an average of 12 hrs / day, you can imagine the paper we used.

[JohnG]

I’m sure it’s several scales of magnitude higher now. We have a vendor that takes paper rolls ~25-30k yards long and prints a pattern on it and cuts it into sheets. Well over $1M today.

My high school cad lab had a large format printer that used felt tip markers. It would hold 6-8 colors and would swap out the markers like a cnc tool change. The printing logic was really bad so it would print a little segment of a line in one corner of the paper, then feed back to the other corner to print a circle, then to some other part to print something else, etc.  A 24x36 print could take around an hour to print. 

[Gary Beasley]

That was a true plotter from way back when! Those were around long before inkjet was available.

[pkinneb]

All just wanted to circle back and say thanks!! 

I found a Minuteman press right in our little town and got them printed for $12 well worth it to me.