How HP Plotters Reduce Printing Costs

In the Philippines, professionals in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector often spend a lot of money on printing. Many factors contribute to printing expenses, including media cutoffs, billable hours spent completing plotter jobs, avoidable reprints, and ink consumption. Using HP DesignJet plotters, you can effectively reduce printing costs thanks to more efficient ink modes for CAD lines, auto-nesting for fitting A0 and A1 sheets on a single roll, and highly accurate previews that can mitigate the risk of errors.

Other features that reduce HP DesignJet cost per print include HP Click or HP Smart Stream, which enables batching of various file formats in one job, minimises operator touches, and standardises presets. Combined with proactive maintenance alerts, sleep scheduling for energy efficiency, and dependable media handling, you'll be able to significantly reduce printing costs.

This article will go over the different factors that lead to a high plotter printing cost and how to reduce these expenses.

Many elements contribute to a high plotter printer cost, such as:

• Ink cartridge replacements
• Printing errors that require reprints
• Media offcuts
• Energy usage

Now, here are some ways to reduce printing costs using the right printer designs.

You can reduce ink spend while maintaining high-quality prints with the following:

Cut down on HP DesignJet cost per print using either Draft mode or Economode.

Draft mode is a technique that generally uses less ink and toner for more efficient printing. Economode is a particular HP setting that you can use to further decrease usage.

Depending on the project, you should also select cost-effective presets when possible. While colour renders optimise quality for photorealistic images, using considerably more ink and toner, monochrome CAD drawings will focus on maximising readability to communicate technical details.

Determine the specific lineweight, or line thickness, you need for each project, which can help reduce ink usage. Also, you can use your printer driver or PC3 file to scale prints as needed.

You may also take the following critical steps to reduce printing costs:

Using HP Click, you can automatically nest PDFs of various sizes and A1 and A0 sheets, helping you save more paper and minimise media waste.

HP DesignJet printers also offer the ability to batch jobs to reduce offcuts and further reduce media waste.

Before printing, view your HP printer's preview, which can clearly indicate if any errors will result during printing.

Eliminate the need for reprints and maintain operational efficiency with these items:

In addition to checking for issues with orientation, scale, and margins, HP's accurate visual preview can help confirm orientation and size to prevent errors.

Easily communicate print jobs between teams with shared presets and version labelling, keeping projects efficient from concept to final print.

Minimise operator touches by using multiple print sizes in a single run.

Cut down on operational costs with the following precautions:

When not in use, HP printers can effectively shut down or sleep to avoid drawing energy while idle. They also give owners the ability to schedule times when the printer is not operational.

HP Smart provides proactive maintenance alerts to notify operators of potential issues to resolve. You can further keep your printer up and running by keeping it in a clean and temperature-controlled environment and regularly cleaning printheads and other parts.

Here's how to calculate HP DesignJet cost per print to figure out how to reduce printing costs:

To calculate the total cost of a printing project, factor in the cost of ink used per page, which could be in millilitres per square meter (ML/m²) or grams (g/m²). Also, calculate the cost of media used per page. Energy usage per hour and the operator time spent on each project will also factor into the total plotter printing cost.

As an example, a company might need to print multiple designs for a single project using mixed media. This would ordinarily take a lot of time manually. But by using nesting and the printer's Draft or Economode, the company could not only save time and maximise media usage but also reduce ink usage while maintaining quality.

Let's look at a couple of ways to get the most from your HP DesignJet print projects:

Every printer should have the same driver version installed for consistency. Also, the PC3 file that details paper sizes and other information should be standardised.

Additionally, you may want to go with a colour-dependent plot style (CTB) file to assign plotting properties based on colour. Alternatively, name plot style (STB) files use names applied to specific objects or layers. STB files generally offer more flexibility.

Choose the right file format for your print, and use HP Click to preview your project and determine if there are any potential issues. If not, proceed to print.

Take these steps to get started with HP DesignJet and reduce printing costs with ease:

Want to see what our printers can do? Book a demo with us to see how your current files turn out.

To further reduce printing costs, identify the key areas that drain your budget most and set goals to reduce each one, optimising print operations accordingly.

Check out some of our HP DesignJet promotions and discover what our printers can do for your projects.