Every engineering office asks this, and most answers come down to a hunch. This comparison turns it into arithmetic.
Work out how many metres you print externally each month and at what rate. An office with two continuously active projects usually recovers a plotter's cost within a year. But the bigger gain is not money — it is revising, printing and revising again the same day instead of waiting on a print shop.
| Item | In-house plotter | Print shop |
|---|---|---|
| Up-front cost | Device and stand | Zero |
| Cost per metre | Clearly lower | Higher, and higher again for rush jobs |
| Turnaround on a revision | Minutes | Hours to next day |
| Project confidentiality | The drawing never leaves the office | Passes through a third party |
| Wrong revision risk | Under your control | Common when sending by email |
| Service and supplies | Your responsibility | Not your responsibility |
| Unusual sizes and media | Limited to your device | Wider |
Add up your external print invoices for the last six months and divide by six. That is your real monthly spend. Compare it against the plotter cost divided over 24 months, plus an estimate for ink and paper. If the second number is lower, owning wins — if it is higher, keep outsourcing. We say this plainly: we tell plenty of offices not to buy.
The invoice does not show the hours lost going back and forth, or the deadlines that slipped because prints were not ready, or the times an outdated revision was printed because the wrong file was sent. Offices that bought a plotter usually say that was the real gain, not the cost difference.
Still unsure? Tell us your monthly volume and what you use it for and we will recommend — often the cheaper one.
Ask usNo. Day-to-day operation is simple and learned in one session, and training is included with supply. What needs attention is changing the roll and not letting the inks run dry.
That is a legitimate concern, which is why we recommend a service contract for offices working to hard deadlines. There is also no harm in keeping a print shop relationship as a fallback.
Start from the largest size you actually print, not the largest possible. Most engineering offices work at A1 and A0, and need the CAD line rather than the imaging line.
Talk to us and the ITCO team will recommend the devices and solutions that match your workload and budget.
