How To Use the Department's Poster Printer

The poster printer is located in Salem Hall. The following directions are primarily for Power Point. Notes for printing pdf's follows.

Set proper size of slide

• Height: 36 inches (91.43 cm)
• Width: 48 inches (121.9 cm)

The printer roll is 36" wide, thus will print the short side first. You can have a longer poster, but the maximum height is 36".

Set Text Size
Text can be whatever size you would like, but 30pt text for abstracts/text blocks is a good starting point, with 20pt for captions. Title blocks should be larger, 86-90pt font.

Images
The printer does a very good job of rendering images, but if there is any pixilation in your image, it will show when the poster is printed. Be sure to preview images at 100% size before printing.

Printing

1. Download driver. The printer is an HP 800. The driver is currently located here.
   • Select your operating system, and download HP DesignJet 500/800 HP-GL2 and HP RTL Driver. The PostScript Drivers will not print PowerPoint reliably.
2. Install the driver.
   • The driver comes in a self-extracting zip file. Create a folder for the driver (example "HP 800 Driver" on the desktop) and extract the files to there.
   • Go to Printers and faxes and add new printer
   • Select "Local Printer attached to this computer"
   • For port, select "USB 001" or other USB port available, click next
   • Select "have disk" and browse to the folder where the driver files were unzipped
   • Select "dsgj800.inf" and click open
   • Choose "HP Designjet 800 42 by HP"
   • Click next and finish
3. Connect Printer to USB Port. Printer should now autodetect.
4. Print Poster
   • Go to File -- Print
   • Choose HP DesignJet 800 42 by HP
   • Click Box for "Scale to fit paper"
   • Click properties next to printer name
     Under Paper/Quality Tab, choose "custom" under paper options and enter a width of 36, height of 48. Click ok.
   • Click "Print Preview" if everything looks ok, click print!
5. Drying
   • The printer automatically is set to let the ink dry for 10 minutes.
   • If there is no line, you can let it dry on the printer, otherwise, you can hit "form feed and cut" on the printer to go ahead and cut the paper early and dry it on a lab bench.
   • For glossy paper let it dry for a couple hours before rolling, for matte paper, 30 minutes.

pdf (Adobe Acrobat) Files
If you are using acrobat, the steps are similar, but install the "HP DesignJet 800ps postscript driver" instead of the GL2.