HP DesignJet 3500 Plotter

Overview

The HP DesignJet 3500 plotter 'duotone' is located in room 323, in the middle of A-wing of the 3rd floor of Gates. It is used for printing large documents such as posters. The plotter is quite slow, and supplies for it are extremely expensive, so please proofread your documents carefully before sending them to the plotter.

'doutone' is not a public printer. We try to allow incidental use to others at Stanford as a courtesy, but you will be asked to help pay for the supplies you use and you should schedule usage a week in advance through email to support@graphics. Please prepare your documents as described below and then you will be given temporary access to a computer in the graphics lab for printing.

Please do not change any of the front-panel LCD settings on the printer, as you are likely to cause other people's print jobs to print incorrectly.

Note: If you can't find an answer to your question on this web page, email support@graphics.

Supplies

Paper for duotone is located underneath the plotter. The ink system is quite complicated and must be handled by a professional.

Recommended Poster Directions (Powerpoint)

It is a nightmare to get the paper orientation and sizes set correctly in both the driver and the application so that you get the printout you want. I suggest following this next series of directions to get a working poster:

Use powerpoint to create your poster.
Start with this powerpoint file.
Verify that PowerPoint's "Page Setup" is set to the following:

Size = custom
Orientation = landscape
Width = 39.4 inches
Height = 27.9 inches

Create your poster
Select Print... from the menu
Choose duotone as your printer
Click on the printer configuration button within the "Print..." dialog box. Choose "E Size Sheet" and "Landscape" in the configuration dialog box.
Click on the print button. Note: Don't check the "scale to fit paper" box in powerpoint.
Printing your poster will be very slow. It can sometimes take upwards of a half-hour before it prints anything. A status like "receiving data" or "processing" is normal, but "out of memory" indicates something which is too big to rasterize or, more likely, a mismatch between your page setup parameters in PowerPoint and the printer driver. Try to check on it after it has been going for about five minutes to make sure something is happening.
You can check status via the print server on scroll: http://scroll.stanford.edu:631/printers/duotone.
You can press the "cancel" button on the plotter if something is wrong with your poster.

Again, please do not make any adjustments to the plotter's configuration using the front-panel controls.

Notes on front-panel settings

The front-panel settings should not be changed from the following:

postscript scale = 100%
rotate = 0
The quality should be "Productivity"