HP T610 DesignJet Prints with Precision

By Mark Clarkson

The HP DesignJet T610 is one of two new printers in Hewlett-Packard’s DesignJet T Series, the other being the T1100. The print engines are identical in the two models, and each is available in both 24-in. and 44-in. widths.

  But the T610 is designated a “personal” printer, while the T1100 is for “workgroups.” The practical difference is that the T1100 comes with twice as much RAM, a 40GB hard drive, built-in Ethernet connectivity, and an embedded print server to queue and manage prints onboard the printer.

  I just spent a couple of months working with the 24-in. version of the T610.

  Setup
When HP first contacted me for this review, it offered to help me set up the printer. I declined, of course, with my pride stung. It is,  after all, just a printer. I changed my mind when the forklift showed up at the front door with a coffin- sized box on a wooden palette. I quickly availed myself of a couple of very nice HP technicians who lugged the thing down the basement stairs and set it up in my office. (Thanks, guys!)

  The T610 looks like a sleek, beige, hyperbaric chamber for an 8-year-old: 50 in. wide, 15 in. tall and 24 in. deep. On its — thankfully —  wheeled stand, it’s 41 in. tall and three feet deep with a roll of paper loaded and the paper bin extended.

  There is an Ethernet port on the back of the printer, but the T610 turns out not to actually have a network card installed by default. Connecting via USB wasn’t much of a problem in my tiny office, but if you have longer distances to deal with, you’ll want to consider the optional network adapter.

  The first half-dozen or so times I powered up the T610, it took a very long time to come online — 20 minutes or more. But once it was comfortable in its new environs, the startup time dropped to a much more reasonable two or three minutes.

  High-Resolution Prints
The T610 boasts a maximum resolution of 1200 x 2400 dpi, and I had giddy visions of printing out some very high-resolution renders. Twenty-four inches at 1200 dpi, after all, gives us 28,800 pixels.

  My first attempts failed. The printer would begin the job,  then stop and complain, “PDL ERROR: virtual memory full.” It wasn’t just monster 20K x 20K renders either; the T610 choked on print jobs that seemed reasonable to me, given its size and resolution — e.g., 24 in. x 36 in. at 150 dpi. The T610’s 128MB of onboard memory just wasn’t up to it.

  But then I learned that the solution is to have your computer, rather than the printer, process the print file. It takes considerably longer, but it does work.

  Of course, all that lovely resolution also comes in very handy when printing line drawings, which are much easier on the printer’s RAM.

  (If you do a lot of high-resolution photographic printing,  though, you may be better off with the T1100 “workgroup” printer, with its 256MB of onboard RAM and its 40GB onboard hard drive, in addition to a network card.)

  In Operation
Once I’d puzzled my way through the high-resolution problem,  printing was straightforward. I did have some minor problems when queuing large numbers of prints: the printer would successfully queue and print the images,  but the jobs would be reported back to my computer as having failed.

  The T610 isn’t exactly noisy while operating, but you can certainly hear it working. Speed varied by quality and size, but 24 in. x 36 in. drawings, renders, or photo-graphs, the largest I made, took about 10 minutes to print at maximum resolution and quality.

  After completing a print, the T610 leaves it hanging, to air dry, for a minute or so, and then automatically cuts it with an internal blade. Finished prints drop into a sort of collapsible canvas sling that  hangs in front of the printer.

  Maintenance
The printer will walk you through common setup and maintenance operations — changing paper, changing ink, etc. — via the front panel. During testing, one of the three print heads became dislodged somehow. The printer caught the problem, reported it, and walked me through re-seating it with text and diagrams on the front panel LCD. (Although I am still a little concerned that it came loose in the course of normal operation.)

  The printer holds a single roll of paper, mounted at the bottom rear of the printer. 24-in. rolls were relatively easy to load, but I found narrower rolls to be a bit frustrating to align. You can also sheet feed the T610 from a tray at the back, above the roll.

  Loading new rolls is ideally a two person operation unless you are flexible, long-limbed, and adept at reading upside-down. It’s either that or a lot of walking back and forth.

  Ink & Paper
The T610 uses HP’s Vivera dye-based inks for vivid colors. The ink is delivered from six tanks conveniently mounted in a compartment at the front of the printer — cyan, magenta, yellow, gray, matte black, and photo black. The printer uses both black and gray inks for better, denser black and gray tones; as well as photo black for photographs and renderings; and matte black for technical drawings and the like.

  The T610 will print on a wide variety of media including coated and uncoated bond paper, photographic paper, tracing paper, vellum,  polyester film, and self-adhesive vinyl, to name a few. I did prints with heavy, uncoated bond, gloss-photo paper, and tracing paper. I also tried several prints on heavy canvas, which, it turns out, I shouldn’t have been using in this printer after all. Whoops.

  So, how were the prints? They were great. The T610 produces excellent line drawings, text, photos, and renders. Tiny lines are sharp; black transitions are smooth; and colors are vibrant.

More Info:
HP
Palo Alto, CA
hp.com

> Print area/hr.: 364 square ft.
> Print time: 35 sec/page
> US D color line drawings per hour: 52
> Line accuracy: +/-0.1%
> Min. line wiodth: 0.002 in.
> Max black density: 2.15
> Technology: HP Thermal Inkjet
> Resolution: Up to 2400 x 1200
> Resolution technology: HP Color Layering
> Print head nozzles: 1056
> Cartridges: 6 (cyan, gray, magenta, matte
     black, photo black, yellow
> Ink type: HP Vivera
> Max. roll length: 300 feet
> Media sizes: A, B, C, D
> Memory, standard: 128MB
> Connectivity: 1 high-speed USB 2.0,
    1 EIO Jetdirect accessory, Compatiblity    
    Windows 2000; XP Home; XP Pro; x64;
    Windows Server 2003; Vista Ready; Novell
    NetWare 5.x; 6.x;  Mac OS X 10.2 or
    higher; Citrix MetaFrame.

The DesignJet T610 24 in. lists for $2,595.
The DesignJet T610 44 in. lists for $3,995.

Contributing Editor Mark Clarkson, a.k.a. “the Wichita By-Lineman,” has been writing about all manner of computer stuff for years. An expert in computer animation and graphics, his newest book is Photoshop Elements by Example. Visit him on the web at markclarkson.com or send e-mail about this article c/o [email protected].