Print, Plot and Scan

The Faculty provides services for color printing using high quality large format printers and a series of laser printers for both color and black & white output. The most common method of printing is to use one of the lab computers to send your print jobs; printing via your own computer on the wireless network is possible, but recommended only for the laser printers and not the large format printers if you have large files. We often refer to the large format printers as 'plotters.'

All printing activities are on a fee-for-use basis. As a student or faculty member you are given an account linked to your computer logon that allows you to deposit money in advance of printing. You can find out more about your printing accounts on the "Your Print Account" page. The Faculty sets pricing to be very competitive with private printing services - our goal is to provide convenient in-house facilities while recovering costs so that the printing facility can be self-funded for maintaining equipment and purchasing new equipment and supplies.

You should note that the Printing Facilities involve highly sophisticated and automated systems configured to process and account for your laser prints and large-format prints. There are multiple servers and databases.  Although these systems are available 24 hours a day for your convenience, they are only supported during normal IT department hours.  Dispute our best efforts, systems do fail which could lead to a portion or all of the printing systems not being available until the next business day.  (e.g. Monday after a long weekend).  Additionally, all of the printing devices need regular attention for maintenance, for changing inks, papers and modular hardware components.  This type of servicing of the printers is available during regular IT business hours 10-4 p.m. Monday to Friday and by Student Support Staff until 11 pm most weekdays and weekends.  Please refer to the schedule for more details.  Changing of paper, ink and supplies is not available after these hours and supplies can often run out after hours during high demand times like final reviews.

Typical large-format printing will take 5-10 min. to process, and another 5-10 min. to print if there are no other jobs queued before your job. During peak periods, there could be a backlog of several hours from previously queued jobs waiting to be printed. Up to a 4-5 hour wait is not uncommon the evening before, or the day of a review.   Full support for these devices is only available during regular business hours, and limited secondary support evenings and weekends provided by Student Support Staff. Please plan accordingly and check the status of the queue via the web queue before deciding to submit a pirnt.