I work in a museum and we are looking to get a large format (48")printer for indoor and outdoor signage/posters/graphic panels etc. The most versatile printer for indoor/outdoor seems to be the PrismJet Extra by Mutoh. I have read some posts about it here and people seem happy with the quality at the price. I am wondering what software people use to print out of. We are Macintosh based using Adobe products.
It's a little unfortunate since your shop is Mac-based, but that isn't the end of the world. Although Apple has done all it can to support the stereotype that most creative work happens on Mac hardware the company never overcame the fact the sign industry and outdoor advertising industry is largely Windows PC-based and has been so for more than a decade. All the best RIPs are usually Windows-only products. Onyx and EFI are working on Mac products, but it sounds like you need something that is ready to run right now.
If you're going to do a fairly heavy amount of large format digital printing you may want to add another computer to drive the large format printer anyway, and have it be a Windows XP Pro-based PC.
One of the keys is getting the printer and large format RIP software that will work best with your existing creative applications.
Our shop added large format capability just a couple of months ago, after years of carefully studying the issue. We previously jobbed out a lot of work to service bureaus. Customer demand finally reached a point where it was more profitable to produce a lot of the work in house.
Over the years, I have looked at printers from HP, Epson, Mutoh, Mimaki, Gerber and more. Roland's new 54" VP540 printer/cutter and their latest version of the VersaWorks RIP is what got us off the fence.
The new VP540 is more simple to use and maintain than Roland's previous generation of printers. Roland's VersaWorks RIP software has a true Adobe Postscript Level 3 engine and works very well with files generated from the latest Adobe Creative Suite applications.
The VP300 and VP540 aren't cheap, especially if you get the high speed version of the VP540 and other add-ons like the very handy print take up system. Throw in a laminator and you're adding a few grand more to the price.
You can get one of the members here to print what ever you need at a fraction of the cost of doing it yourself.
That depends.
If the printer is only needed once every few days or so, then yes it definitely makes sense to job out the printing project to someone else.
If you have lots of prints to make, enough so that printer is getting frequent use daily, then it may be more profitable to have one operating in house.
Some large museums have their own in house printers to create dozens of banners to hang around the site to promote exhibitions or upcoming events. However, lots of museums need large format output onto unusual material, such as fabrics, for more tasteful looking displays. It often takes a much more expensive, specialized printer to create displays on unusual substrates.
In the end, you're really going to have to think about what sorts of things this printer will need to produce and how often its services will be needed.
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