Plotter

HP DesignJet 600

Roll-fed plotter using (original) DeskJet Black and CMY cartridges.

Serial and Parallel interface - choose from control panel - currently (5/1/2014) connected to quorra using a long parallel cable.

Switching on.

Before switching on, make sure that the paper roll is in place, positioned against the right-hand alignment mark, and not torn so as to prevent the printhead from moving.

Switch on, button at the left-hand side. The printer will go through an extensive self-test routing, which includes examining the paper to see how wide it is. When ready, the display will say so.

Printing.

There is a driver installed under Windows XP on quorra. Other operating systems may also have drivers these have not been tested.

There are probably more printer settings that need to be checked when printing on a device like this, where the paper size is not obvious. The paper roll is A0 (841mm) width, to check that this is the current selection when the print dialog is opened from the application that you want to print from.

The only other option to check is under printer / advanced options, where there is an option to 'print as bitmap image'. This should not be selected, as it slows down transmission of the data increasing the possibility of errors (e.g. an A4 dosument printed at 400%, which was the test piece, requires the transmission of 210MB of data in 'bitmap image' mode, compared with under 2MB otherwise using the plotters internal intelligence.

Future

We have a NetDirect adaptor ready for installation which will allow access from any device on the network.

A spindle needs to be fabricated to keep the paper roll from drifting in position.