Comments anyone? Concerns, gotchas? -- James Wedding, P.E. IT Manager Jones & Boyd, Inc. Dallas, TX XP/2 on P4-3.4/1G LDT2005+C3D http://au.autodesk.com Sign up now for AU2004!
We have 3 of them in our Kansas City office. Service calls are infrequent. Plot quality good. Software believe it or not seems to be just flexible enough to do whatever we need without being complicated.
Hey James - we are replacing a KIP 2000 with the 6000 series. From all the tests involved, it is pretty much a plug and play changeover. The 6000's are rated and reviewed well, our technicians are recommending them to us as they don't want to work on a 2000 with 1.3 million square feet on it anymore. Mark Evinger
We have an 8000 (upgraded from a 4000) and its great. Software for plotting is the best around and the plotter is fast with very good quality prints. We run about 70,000 sq. ft. per month, and apart from regular post preventative maintenance it has been trouble free.
Mark: We are looking at a KIP 2000 to replace our HP 800 inkjet plotter. Any advise on performance, reliability, maintenance etc? We us approx. 100,000 sq ft per year, which is probably not a lot for a copier. Thanks Keith Biggs
We have an 8000 (upgraded from a 4000) and its great. Are you running the Heidi drivers in AutoCAD to plot directly to it? We just got a Kip8000 and the Heidi AutoCAD drivers don't seem to work very well. From AutoCAD 2004 they are ok. But if you publish from 2004, they force a plot file. In 2005 they don't print at all. I've had to resort to using HP 750C drivers. I think our dealer didn't set it up right. Power Print Request won't plot many PDF's directly (we purchased the post script option). They end up coming up with an "Invalid vector file" error. Plotting them from Acrobat directly to the device usually works. When browsing to the KIP 8000 controller to setup a network printer on local PCs, the drivers reported that they were incompatible. S owe had to manually install the Windows drivers from disk on every PC. -- Darren J. Young CAD/CAM Systems Developer Cold Spring Granite Company 202 South Third Avenue Cold Spring, Minnesota 56320 Email: Phone: (320) 685-5045 Fax: (320) 685-5052
We have the 8000 installed as a system printer and then create a pc3 for that printer, and this works very well. We do not use the heidi driver. Sounds like your dealer did not set up the install correctly. Is the plotter installed on a server? That is the way ours is set up (system printer on a server). Call KIP America and ask for software support (800-252-6793). They have been very helpful with us. No problems here printing PDFs. We plot everything to file on the server and then send sets to the plotter with PowerPrint. We also use the PowerPrint software to convert those plot files to PDF or Tiff for distribution. Hope that helps you. Once you get that thing working right you will love it.
Hi Darren, The best way to print from AutoCAD to the KIP would be by using the heidi driver. What problems do you have when using the KIP heidi driver for 2005. Have you approached your KIP dealer regarding 'Invalid vector file' issue when printing PDF files. We would be glad to help to get your issues resolved.
Hopefully in the near future Mylar will die. If the plotters are setup correctly the toner seems to bond just fine to the mylar. How durable I can't really say, the 6000 model has only been on the market a year. We got one of the first and I haven't heard any complaints about the toner chipping off or deteriorating. John Postlewait IS Department George Butler Associates, Inc.
not sure if you got all the answer you need but we just got a KIP 6000, and while its an improvement over our Ricoh 470, it does have quite a bit of paper jams(there is kit that may or may not fix this, haven't tried it yet). Scanning is great though if that is important to you.
