Plotter Printing

Submitting print jobs

The School of Physics Support team (SoPST) is in charge of printing posters for our users. In order to have a poster printed, users must bring the documents in a CD or USB keychain to our office located in the Howey Physics Building in Room S101. Please make sure to read and understand this page completely so that you can comply with our printing requirements to avoid delays in printing your posters.

Who can print

Any faculty, research, student or staff member who is associated with the School of Physics may request posters to be printed by the SoPST. There may be some instances in which students from other departments collaborating with people from the School of Physics will require a poster to be printed. In such cases, the School of Physics member should submit the print jobs.

Print job time

The SoPST requires you to submit your print jobs with a minimum lead time of 2 business days per poster. The SoPST will do their best effort to print posters submitted with less than 2 business days lead time, however, we cannot guarantee that your poster will be printed should problems arise if you did not submit your poster with the required lead time.

Poster Sizes

Our plotter uses 42 inch wide paper rolls, so you must make sure that you always create posters that have one dimension set to 42 inches. You can submit landscape images that are X" by 42" or portrait images which are 42" by X".

We understand that in some occasions you will be restricted to a certain paper size which may be smaller than 42". This is fine, however, you must be prepared to cut the paper yourself as we do not have any equipment for cutting the paper for you.

In cases where you need many copies of a poster which is smaller than 42", make sure you fit as many of the smaller posters as possible in 42". For example, if you need to print 3 posters that are 11" by 17", the file submitted for printing should have 3 copies of the poster side by side (totaling 33") which is as many as you can fit in a 42" wide roll.

As of 9/30/2009, we also have a 36" wide plotter. We will be able to print your 36" posters without you having to manually cut the paper. When creating your 36" posters, please make sure to follow the same dimension guidelines shown in the image above adjusted to 36" if you wish your prints on 36" wide paper.

Borders

It is extremely important that whenever you create a poster, you allow for at least 1/2 inch margins in all sides of the paper. Our plotter is not capable of doing border-less printing. Leaving 1/2 inch unused space in all borders of the paper will ensure that the information in your poster will not get cut towards the edges.

Accepted Document Types (formats)

Remember to make sure when creating your document that the dimensions are 1:1 (One dimension set to 42"). We will not be able to resize your files if you did not use the correct dimensions when creating your poster. Most of the formats below will allow you to set the page size under the Page Setup options which is usually found under the File menu.

1. Microsoft Formats: PowerPoint, Word, Publisher, Excel
   
2. PDF files: Make sure your PDF is created real size with one dimension set to 42". You can always open your PDF file with acrobat reader and then click in Properties under the File menu to see the dimensions of your PDF file.
3. Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.

• Always allow 2 business days or more of lead time to have your poster printer.
• Make sure to print a scaled down version of your poster in a smaller printer and proof read it before having it printed by us. It is often the case that mistakes in the poster contents or problems with images are not identified until after the poster has been printed.
  
• We strongly recommend to avoid the use of color backgrounds, even more if you use fading or degrade like effects. This type of effects will make the rendering of your poster take over 1 hour just to be sent from the computer to the printer. Un-necessary color backgrounds also waste ink and will make your print outs highly prone to smearing of the ink.
• If you are using PowerPoint, select all the objects in your poster and group them as one.