HP DesignJet 5000 PS

TheDesignJet 5000 PS is a large format printer from HP, used for printing indoor oroutdoor signage, banners, advertising, etc. It can print on media with a maximumwidth of 60 inches and length of up to 300 feet. The printer takes in sixseparate ink cartridges–black, cyan magenta, yellow, light cyan, and lightmagenta–each with a capacity of 680 ml. Each ink cartridge is linked to aseparate print head through ink tubes. In all, there are six separate printheads with a capacity of about 40 ml each. As a precaution, leak detectors havealso been placed along the ink tubes.

The inks for the printer are available in two different forms–normaldye-based inks and UV-based (ultraviolet) inks. The advantage of UV-based inksis that they do not fade for a long time, even when exposed to UV rays, thusincreasing the lifetime of the printed image. This is very useful for outdoorsignage.

You can connect the printer to your PC via a parallel port orto a 10/100 Mbps network through the network card. It supports TCP/IP,AppleTalk, DLC/LLC and IPX/SPX protocols. There’s an option to connect it viaUSB too. The printer ships with 128 MB of RAM, which can be upgraded to 256 MB.It also has a hard drive with a capacity of 5 GB. This is used to store fontsand color profiles, and also for spooling and queuing documents which have to beprinted. It can print at a maximum resolution of 1,200x600 dpi, both in colorand in black-and white. It has a rated print speed of 569 square feet per hour,which is supposed to be the fastest in this range of printers.

The printer supports a range of print media like coatedpaper, photo paper, canvas, etc. It stores media profiles for different types ofmedia, which ensures that the color you see on your screen and the color youfinally print on paper are the same. It comes preloaded with 12 media profiles.If you want to use a third-party media, you can download the media profile forthat particular type and install it in the printer. The printer supports AdobePost- script level 3 as well as HP-GL/2. You can also print images from Unix,Linux and Win NT through ZAHRaster Plus.

The HP DesignJet 5000 PS is targeted at two different users.One is the graphic-arts customer like advertising agencies, signage industry,filmmakers, etc. The other is the print-for-pay segment–people who simply buythe printer, connect it to their PC and charge for printouts.

Sachin Makhija

at New Delhi