My church has inherited a DesignJet 500. I'm wondering if this printer would do a good job on printing pictures. Will it print on metallic paper? Will it print canvas? The only thing they have printed on it was a "sign" and I noticed that there were lines in the cyan and magenta letters. Is that the best it can do? Is that fixable?
I tried to find this info online, but nothing in the specs for the machine mentioned what mediums it would accept.
Thanks so much. My brief read indicates that it will NOT do metallic paper or canvas. But that may not be true. But I'll download this and do a better read.
There should be a list of all the media that is compatable somewhere in the program that controls the printer. That's the way it is for the large format printer where I work. Have you tried any sort oh head cleaning routine to eliminate the striping issue you're having? Good luck
AzPicLady wrote:
My church has inherited a DesignJet 500. I'm wondering if this printer would do a good job on printing pictures. Will it print on metallic paper? Will it print canvas? The only thing they have printed on it was a "sign" and I noticed that there were lines in the cyan and magenta letters. Is that the best it can do? Is that fixable?
I tried to find this info online, but nothing in the specs for the machine mentioned what mediums it would accept.
No they will NOT do canvas or metallics. I had one for years and its a quite capable printer but uses dye inks. I switched both my large format printers to pigment ink units for their much better print longevity. I stayed with HP because of their excellent quality and high resistance to head clogging. If you are getting lines that indicates it has been out of service for quite some time. Head cleanings usually help this a lot. Changing their maintenance tray is a huge pain too.
What computer operating system are you using? Check at HP to see if they have a driver for your OS. This is a twelve-year-old printer.
twowindsbear wrote:
There should be a list of all the media that is compatable somewhere in the program that controls the printer. That's the way it is for the large format printer where I work. Have you tried any sort oh head cleaning routine to eliminate the striping issue you're having? Good luck
I did read the media list and metallic and canvas were not mentioned. We're still in the "what do we do with this" stage. Have printed one line of text. Thanks.
nadelewitz wrote:
What computer operating system are you using? Check at HP to see if they have a driver for your OS. This is a twelve-year-old printer.
The fellow I was talking to apparently downloaded the drivers. I'm on Win7 Pro, so I assume it would work. Thanks.
Ancient technology. Typical donation to a church. Only way to recycle obsolete technology, give it to a church, get a receipt and take a $500 tax writeoff. It's worth about $25 and a lot of heartache or spendy tech time. It was never intended as a photo printer. Put a burning bag of dogshit on the porch of the donator!!!!
Ancient technology. Typical donation to a church. Only way to recycle obsolete technology, give it to a church, get a receipt and take a $500 tax writeoff. It's worth about $25 and a lot of heartache or spendy tech time. It was never intended as a photo printer. Put a burning bag of dogshit on the porch of the donator!!!!
AzPicLady wrote:
I did read the media list and metallic and canvas were not mentioned. We're still in the "what do we do with this" stage. Have printed one line of text. Thanks.
Did your donor give you any sort of media with the printer? How about more ink?
If you have to buy media & ink, you'll probably wind up spending more for these items than if you took your print project(s) to a local printer or sign maker.
We don't have an HP printer at work, but the printer we do have (the brand name escapes me at the moment) uses 8 ink carts @ about $100 per, and the media is rather pricey, too. For instance, a roll of reflective media that we use mostly to stripe & decorate emergency vehicles is in the neighborhood of $2K - this is the most expensive media we stock, though.
Good luck with your 'gift.'
This wasn't a donation. But it was free. One of the fellows was closing his office and offered us his printers. We selected some and he gave us all of them. He gets no "credit" for. I was just curious about being able to print photos on it. Or is it more of a plot printer.
It's a photo printer if you want to print BIG photos.
People are so keen to say 'bin' older printers. Turning printers into landfill and buying another printer is hardly 'green' in this modern world. Old technology? If it can be made working it can do today what it did yesterday. If the requirement is something it is/never was capable of that is a different story. The banding is almost certainly a head cleaning requirement. As it is an HP printer the replacement cartridges may be expensive as most (all?) HP printers have the heads made onto the cartridges. The advantage is they give fabulous quality for printing text but the cartridges are expensive. For Win7 64bit you may need an 'adapter' programme that will probably be available from HP. One of my printers is an HP Laser printer that uses such an interpreter supplied by HP. There is a lot of fun and satisfaction in getting such a printer operating. nadelewitz says it's a photo printer if you want big photos. I'm reminded of advice I had on choosing machinery for my engineering works, "What will do a lot will do a little" . Better to have large item production available for when it's needed even if most of the work is smaller. No doubt the church group could make use of posters bigger than A4.
AzPicLady you may enjoy being in front of the printer almost as much as being behind the camera!
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