On Jun 11, 11:58*pm, Jim Adney wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:26:31 GMT John Robertson
wrote:

Jim, if you live in a medium sized city chances are you have a company
that copies architectural drawings. These guys have continuous feed
photocopiers that will copy almost ANY length of paper!

Interesting thought. I didn't know that such things existed. I can ask
around. It's likely that if I had more than one made at the same time,
each one might be cheaper.

Yep. They do. The only downside is that you are stuck with whatever
default width the machine takes. We keep one in the office that is set
for 42" as the standard width. Lots of waste for small drawings. It is
"scanner-to-plotter" HP technology and so does color (very nicely) as
well. NOT CHEAP. It also operates (with different dyes and/or inks) on
vinyl, finished fabrics, sticky-back or slick paper - even more
expensive.

On the other hand, as the entire system is computerized, we often will
print-in-parallel so as not to waste paper. We can scan one 18" banner
into the system and print two out on the 42" stock with good margins.
If you are using 8.5 x whatever originals, you could print four rows
in parallel. All this can be set up after the initial scan and before
the *expensive* "PRINT" button is hit. 11 x 17 fold-outs can also be
accomodated in the initial set-up without (much) waste.

As William notes below, the length that can be plotted/printed is
limited only by the length of the printer-stock roll.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:17:59 -0700 (PDT) Peter Wieck
wrote:

On Jun 11, 11:58*pm, Jim Adney wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:26:31 GMT John Robertson
wrote:

Jim, if you live in a medium sized city chances are you have a company
that copies architectural drawings. These guys have continuous feed
photocopiers that will copy almost ANY length of paper!

Interesting thought. I didn't know that such things existed. I can ask
around. It's likely that if I had more than one made at the same time,
each one might be cheaper.

Yep. They do. The only downside is that you are stuck with whatever
default width the machine takes.

Hmmm, we have a 36" roll-fed plotter. I wonder if I could reformat all
this into the right width and then print out 4 (or whatever) of them
at a time. To do this right, I think I'd have to pull all this data
into a spread sheet first, so I could format the info into the right
usable shape.

The interesting part would be to design a cutter to cut them into
strips as they come out of the plotter....

It's still worth checking at our local print shop to see what they can
do.

-
-----------------------------------------------
Jim Adney
Madison, WI 53711 USA
-----------------------------------------------

In article ,
says...


Hmmm, we have a 36" roll-fed plotter. I wonder if I could reformat all
this into the right width and then print out 4 (or whatever) of them
at a time. To do this right, I think I'd have to pull all this data
into a spread sheet first, so I could format the info into the right
usable shape.

The interesting part would be to design a cutter to cut them into
strips as they come out of the plotter....

It's still worth checking at our local print shop to see what they can
do.

The Full Adobe Acrobat program will Scan an existing Roll Chart from a tube
tester. Only problem with it would be page ends margins and such that you
wouldn't want margins at the end of each sheet to make new roll charts up.
Could be an interesting project.

John k9uwa

On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:53:35 -0500, Jim Adney
wrote:

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:17:59 -0700 (PDT) Peter Wieck
wrote:

On Jun 11, 11:58*pm, Jim Adney wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:26:31 GMT John Robertson
wrote:

Jim, if you live in a medium sized city chances are you have a company
that copies architectural drawings. These guys have continuous feed
photocopiers that will copy almost ANY length of paper!

Interesting thought. I didn't know that such things existed. I can ask
around. It's likely that if I had more than one made at the same time,
each one might be cheaper.

Yep. They do. The only downside is that you are stuck with whatever
default width the machine takes.

Hmmm, we have a 36" roll-fed plotter. I wonder if I could reformat all
this into the right width and then print out 4 (or whatever) of them
at a time. To do this right, I think I'd have to pull all this data
into a spread sheet first, so I could format the info into the right
usable shape.

The interesting part would be to design a cutter to cut them into
strips as they come out of the plotter....

It's still worth checking at our local print shop to see what they can
do.

-
-----------------------------------------------
Jim Adney
Madison, WI 53711 USA
-----------------------------------------------

Many such printers / plotters include cutters for separating the
output of different prints / plots.