Printer/copier for blueprints

[Pokey]

The company i work for is looking into getting a printer to print out blue prints that general contractors/home builders send to us to bid. I am not very framiliar with such machines, but have heard that they can not only print blueprints, but copy them too. does anyone have any experience in this topic?

[Cole]

The ones you are talking about are very expensive.

As in copy you mean scan, right?

If so then you will be looking at a minimum entry cost of $10k.

http://h30267.www3.hp.com/country/us/en/designjet/4500/key_benefits.html?pageseq=268692

[jbmollohan]

Pokey,

I perform value engineering and estimating for several supply houses and builders. For those suppliers and builders that do not have electronic copies of their prints readily available, I began to look into getting a Printer/Scanner and determined that it is cheaper to send the paper prints out to a blueprint shop or Kinkos to have them scan the prints and then email the electronic files to my office. The local print shop and Kindos have free pick up and delivery.

What program are you using to perform your take off's?

[Rich]

Yeah - you're looking at 2 different machines. A printer and a scanner.
Or like jbmollohan suggested - outsource it.
3-4k could get you a pretty decent printer.. the scanner is probably another 2-3k. Plus the space to put them. Most of them include software and of course drivers are included.

[Pokey]

Thanks for your replies. As i researched amount the machine will be used doesn't justify the cost. We are going to look in to a large format printer, possibly on a lease.

I use excel to do all of my take-offs. I bid work of a large residential contractor and do all of their siding and foundation take-offs. Excel really fits well with what we do. I have been looking at adding a digitizer to increase my production. I know it will help a ton on siding takeoffs.

[crb555]

We have a HP plotter... I think we paid 9k for it. It will print from .dwg, pdf, tiff, etc. We also have a blueprint copier, I think we paid about 3k for it, used.

We use Estimation Logistics... with a 36" X 48" digitizer tablet, and a little keypad that I think is proprietary to Logistics. Out stuff is geared towards a mechanical contractor. This is some **expensive** software, but it works very well.

As far as costs go, in our case, we have taken off about 34 million worth of plumbing and hvac since January 1, with 3 estimators in the shop. If we didn't have this equipment, we would be hard pressed to turn out 25% as much. We usually get about 10-11% of what we bid, so obviously the more we bid, the more we get. Paying a blueprint copying place gets expensive on the scale that we do. Its very nice to just get the cad drawings, and just print out the sections you need. Also helps a lot on large sheetmetal jobs, which typically require shop drawings.


CRB5

[Big Builder]

I have a 48" Hp colour laser plotter we use for printing plans for estimating.

I now just ask everyone to supply their plans electronically to us.

Far better than having all these rolled up plans laying around.

Looks professional too.