The end user is a multinational company dealing in solutions to optimize energy and operational efficiencies of buildings. The head quarter of its operation in Malaysia is located at The Garden South Tower, Mid Valley City, Kuala Lumpur.
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| The Garden South Tower, Mid Valley City, KL |
The company has decided to acquire a A1 size wide format printer. In the past, all the technical drawings were printed at fast print shops. Although the print volume is not that high, but the operation manager of the said company believes that it is more appropriate to own a plotter with the following benefits:
- Cost effective- Fast print shop is charging A1 color CAD drawing at MYR4.00 per piece. It will only costs user about MYR1.00 per A1 print (paper and ink) by printing in-house.
- On-demand printing
- Better control of confidentiality
- Improve productivity
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| Epson Stylus Pro 7700 |
As usual, Several vendors representing 3 major brands of large format printer namely Canon imagePROGRAF, HP Designjet and Epson Stylus Pro were invited to bid for the deal.
User requirements:
- A1 size
- High speed CAD printing
- Network- Work group environment (5 users)
- Ergonomics
A total of 5 models were proposed by the vendors as below:
- Canon iPF605
- Canon iPF650
- Epson Stylus Pro 7700
- HP Designjet 510 (24-inch)
- HP Designjet T790 (24-inch)
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| Canon iPF605 |
Epson Stylus Pro 7700 and HP Designjet 510 were filtered out at the first evaluation due to the slow printing speed. The user tested all the 5 printers with a complicated vectors file and commented as below:
"HP Designjet 510 is the slowest in term of file processing. The DJ510 started print about 15 minutes after the "Enter" key is hit."
"Epson Stylus Pro 7700 printing speed is ridiculously slow. I lost my patience seeing the print head moving left and right like never ending. The printer is also very bulky as compared to the Canon iPF and HP Designjet"
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| HP Designjet T790 (24-inch) e-Printer |
"Canon iPF605 and Canon iPF650 are very impressive on the printing speed and ease of use. The HP Designjet T790 is also not bad in term of productivity; and it comes with sophisticated feature like connecting to the cloud. But our technical documents are classified as confidential; furthermore the IT department does not like the idea of getting an printer that is able to connects to the web."
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| Canon iPF650 |
The vendors were requested to perform an on-site demo with shortlisted A1 Plotter as below:
- Canon iPF605
- Canon iPF650
- HP Designjet T790
Again, below are the comments from the users.
"It is very difficult to load the paper from the front for HP Designjet T790. And with limited space, we are unable to access from behind."
"It is easy to load paper from the front for Canon iPF605 and Canon iPF650. Canon iPF650 is even better than Canon iPF605 because users can just drop the roll holder as soon as it is on track and the paper roll will be seated automatically."
Finally, the Canon iPF650 was chosen. Look at below pictures and you will understand why size does matter and front accessibility is important for corporate office with limited space.
2 comments:
Currently, using the IPF650 too and printing is okay with our low volume printing but surprisingly we have changed the inks twice in 6 months! We heard from some other users that the plotter uses alot of ink to clean the printheads from clogging. Cheap printer, expensive inks and high wastage!! In then end we have to pay more for what we didn't print..No wonder it uses a high capacity waste ink container.%#$@*.
Hi Anonymous, you change 2 cartridges in 6 months or 2 set of cartridges in 6 months?
Unlike the previous version like iPF700 and iPF600, the new iPF650 uses minimal ink to purge or clean the print head.
But low volume users where keep the printer off for more than 1 week will trigger printhead auto-cleaning.
Suggest you to "ON" the printer and put it to Auto standby mode even though you are not printing. This will definitely help a lot.
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