CAD printer question

I have a Brother 11x17 all-in-one, which cost $350 a couple of years ago, and works great for light duty use. I have it set up to scan via ftp to my laptop or my office server.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Anyone make a reasonably-priced 11 x 17 laser? ...Jim Thompson

You can get a gently-used HP5000 series for about $400 on eBay.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Thanks. My "wife's" 11x17 deskjet is croaking ;-) ...Jim Thompson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I have a HP Laserjet 4MV that is postscript and does letter / tabloid (11x17"). Great workhorse. Quiet too.

What's reasonable? Last year's Lexmark 11 x 17 color was only about $2,500 (a bit slow on the first page compared to the current model), but the cartridges are not inexpensive. Great for schematics. They mostly run around $3,500 and up.

Other than that, you're stuck with B&W or a cloggy inkjet. HP Designjet roll-fed printers ("plotters") seem to be pretty good at not clogging.

Tabloid lasers are big and heavy monsters.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Does it have ink tanks or just cartridges? Ink tanks are always noisy...

bill

It has a modular design with a head assembly that is just an open-top box with the heads on the bottom, and 4 cartridges snap into that box. The cartridges mate tightly with the head assembly so it becomes virtually like a single-piece cartridge.

"Tom Del Rosso" wrote in news:jgvifb$pc2$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Strong high frequency vibration could couple in widely varying degrees in that situation, depending on the area in contact, rather than the firmness of any point contact. (Minimising to point contact between parts might be the best way to reduce noise). What you might try if there is room (and easy access) is looking for slight curves on vertical corners on the catridges, and pushing tapered matchsticks down the gap to reduce any wide area contact. Even if you do it just once to test it you might figure out if it's worth doing. I have no clear idea how precisely the plastics are formed so I can't comment usefully beyond this.

The noise isn't HF vibration. It's mechanical noise. Even after printing it continues to move the mechanism for an unusually long time even for an inkjet.

If it wasn't for the fact that it prints successfully, I would think it had a broken gear. That's the kind of noise it makes.

That's why I was hoping somebody might have an HP 7000 like it. There's no other way to know if it's normal, depending on which I would either get a replacement or a different brand.

"Tom Del Rosso" wrote in news:jh0h21$q3g$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Ok, so not directly from the head, maybe from stepper motors and belts. Basically, if you can figure out which parts are involved, you might see whether this might be influenced by small variations in mechanical tolerance. If it is, there may be no such thing as 'notmal'. :) If it's down to the drive parts there may be less variation so something to be gained from comparisons. But first, see if you can apply figertip pressure gently but firmly to parts of the innards while operating. if that's all it takes to make big variations in sound, comparison with other printers will be far less useful than testing locally and applying a spot fix.

Well, what matters is whether it's normal for the design to have that much tolerance.

It's not very accessible when the lid is closed, but I did find some "review" sites where people often found it a noisy model.

So I'll check other brands, as this is the only one in this size by HP.

Thanks for the input.

"Tom Del Rosso" wrote in news:jh101u$ldd$1@dont- email.me:

I had an HP plotter that was very noisy too. On slow moves it used rapidly repeated pulses each hard enough to make a lot of noise. It amounted to faster moves being more quiet because of smoothing by the inertia of the parts. My HP Laserjet 5N is fairly quiet, but in another room so I don't hear it so much anyway. (And no use to you, paper too small in this case).

Those people might be right, but if they didn't say what they had compared with, I'd have no idea.

post a video on you-tube say "doues your hp make this horrible noise"