Paper Types and Loading

Changing the paper is finicky, it can take several tries. Just try to roll it tight on the roll and then roll the paper slowly into the printer. You will here a beep and it will grab the paper. It will then take a bit to check it to see if it is straight, if not, it will kick it out and you try again.

Once the paper loads, it will confirm the paper type. If you have put in a different type, make sure to select that paper from the list. It makes a big difference in performance and smearing of your print.

Printing from the Purcellville Desktop Computer

The plotter was moved so that it could be hooked up directly to the Makersmiths desktop computer in Purcellville, hopefully eliminating a lot of the driver installation and setup issues that people were having. A summary of the steps to print from Inkscape, though the same steps can be applied to print from any other application, are available below.

If you are bringing a file from another computer that you want to print, PDF files are recommended.

Printing from a Laptop

To plot to the plotter from your own laptop, see the Poster at Purcellville. There are also some helpful files here regarding changing the paper.

Driver can be downloaded at

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-designjet-t610-printer-series/3339415

You will also want the HP Instant Print software. It makes printing Certain files very easy. (PDF or image formats)

Microsoft Products WARNING: I am a big fan of Microsoft Publisher, but when you print from any Microsoft product you will be limited to about 4 feet, sometimes less. I don't know why, but it has always been the case. To get around this Look at the procedure at the bottom of this page.

Here is the main HP Site for Information

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-designjet-t610-printer-series/3339415/how-to

Some of the HP Support Files

Microsoft Products Workaround

Create a custom page in your printer driver for the actual size you want the printout. For this example we will use 24" x 96" (2'x8').
- To do this go into Printers and Scanners/Click on the T610 and select Manage
- Select Printer Preferences and go to the Page/Quality tab
- You will see a custom Button, click that.
- Enter a name of 24x96, Page Width will always be your smaller number, Page Height is your larger number
- Click SAVE and OK
- Now create additional custom sizes as determined by the process below.
Now create a page that is only 48" (4') long and the other side would be proportional.
- Use the formula, 48 x <small size of desired> / <Length of desired>
- In our example it would be 48 * 24 / 96 = 12
- That is now the dimensions of the canvas that you will create on (12x48)
When you go to print, there is a Tab for Features
- Under Features select Print On
- Select your Desired print size (in our case 24x96)
- The printer will scale the print to the desired size
- As the print starts to come out of the printer, just do a quick measurement of the width to make sure everything is coming out ok.

Additional Example

Let's say you want a poster that is 2' x 5'
Now our formula is 48 * 24 / 60 = 19.2"
Now our custom pages would look like these
Remember to SAVE after entering each new page size.
When you go back to the page size, at the very bottom you should see something like this