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September/October 2009
Print Master
HP printer produces nearly indestructible project drawings
By Debra Wood
ome contractors carrying paper drawings into the field have discovered an alternative to pages tearing in the wind or ink running in the rain: drawings printed by a large-format Hewlett-Packard Co. printer on banner material with waterproof ink.
“It has proven to us it can weather anything we can throw at it,” says Al Cobb, president of specialty contractor PanelWrights, a structural insulated-panel fabricator and installer in Shenandoah Junction, W.V. “We have found we save a lot of cost, time and headaches by putting one indestructible set of prints in their hands as opposed to bonded paper subject to all sorts of damage.”
Cobb purchased an HP Designjet Z6100 for its ability to print waterproof drawings. It prints on HP Durable Banner with DuPont Tyvek, similar to the material contractors use to wrap new residential structures. It will not tear or fade.
“We have crew members report having plans that have been blown into a nearby puddle or run over by a forklift, and they can pull that set of prints out, hose it off with clean water and they are back to work,” Cobb says. “It has quite the ‘wow factor’ they are happy to show off. And from my perspective, I could not be happier.”
In addition to printing technical drawings, some contractors use the printers to create conceptual drawings for bidding presentations and to resolve issues found in the field by enlarging photos and then discussing corrective options with the design-construction team, says Guayante Sanmartin, HP’s worldwide large-format marketing director in Barcelona, Spain.
“In construction and the architecture-engineering market, the large- format print is used as a contract of what I told you to build,” Sanmartin says. “A printed document is key to our customers because it cannot be manipulated or misunderstood.”
The manufacturer’s recommended street price for the 42-in. Z6100 printer is $9,995, but Sanmartin says promotions may be available depending on the retailer.
Cobb says the finish cost of printing on the Tyvek paper is about $6 for a D-size drawing, an approximately 2-ft by 3-ft page, compared with bond paper at about 50 cents for that size document, $20 or $30 to outsource something on a durable paper or $8 to laminate the drawings. But laminated pages can deteriorate in the sun or suffer water damage if cracks develop, Cobb says.
“Even with something that costs 10% to 20% more, I think [laminated] performs nowhere near as close as the Tyvek page with the waterproof ink,” Cobb says. “With a waterproof system, a wayward raindrop or drop of sweat does not change a nine to a six or an eight to a two. That is worth a lot to us, to know they have a good, clean set of drawings that will always look the same.”
Hewlett-Packard Development Co.
3000 Hanover St.
Palo Alto, Calif. 94304
800-888-4431
www.hp.com/go/graphicarts
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