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  Benedict Green February 21, 2012 at 5:38pm

  I've seen Epson now do a combined A3 printer/scanner (WF 7515) that looks like it should do pretty good prints and claims to be quite efficient on ink. Bit more expensive than the Brother one, but still good value. Not many reviews on Amazon yet. Not sure if it will take heavy photo paper, more of an office machine than photographers printer. I believe that stand alone printers generally give better prints if you're after that sort of quality, but for plans and mood boards it looks ideal. 
  Might get one myself. 
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  David Beasley Garden Design February 21, 2012 at 9:23pm

  I possess an Epson 1160 A3 printer which I bought for about £200 about 10 years ago.

  I used to do all my printing on it and I thought it was great. That was until ink started getting ridiculously expensive and I bought a Windows 7 laptop which it won't work on!

  My Design jobs have generally being getting larger over the years and thus warranted A1 drawings which I get printed off for about £10 each at Staples (full colour). I have recently discovered that my local printing shop can do A3 up to A1 on much better paper for a similar price so I'm gonna go to then next time I get a decent job.

  I also used to laminate my A3 drawings in-house and I think it made them look a million times better than a floppy bit of paper. You can get A1 drawings laminated at Staples for about £16.

  As for A3 4-in-1 printers, I may be wrong but, I'm sure you can only print off at A3 and only scan etc at A4.

  Anyway you look at it, I think that because all modern ink-jet printers need at least 4 expensive cartridges nowadays, for the amount of printing you do it may worth outsourcing to a printers.

  Sorry for babbling!

  P.S. If your producing SketchUp / CAD drawings, turn them into vector PDF files (CutePDF) and take them on a memory stick to whoever you go to as they are unlikely to have the software to open original CAD files!
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  Caroline Jones February 21, 2012 at 10:02pm

  Hi,
  I had to get a new A3 printer about a year ago, and after finding what I could on the Internet and some advice from Epsom, I bought an Epsom stylus office b1100. It is much better than the old HP printer I had before. Good for both photos and vectorworks plans. The ink is expensive though, but I don't have to replace the cartridges that often.
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  Fenlandphil February 22, 2012 at 7:17am

  We have a Canon IX400 A3 printer which does what we need, ink prices are fair and it uses readily available cartridges.

  We have an Epson B-500N A4 printer for the catalogues which uses cartridges the size of VHS cassettes for each colour at about £40 each but they will do several 1000 pages per cartridge. As we are constantly adding new products it works out to be more cost effective to do short print runs ourselves than have them printed by a professional printer.

  Both are printers only, the point about laminating is good we bought an A3 laminator for about £70, although my daughter uses it for preparing stuff for her pupils at school more than we do.
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  Rose Lennard February 23, 2012 at 3:27pm

  thanks folks for the suggestions. Epson is sounding like the best bet. I do use a local firm to do most of my printing (they pick up from home and deliver, so saves loads of time) but I still find it helpful to be able to print A3 at home. The laminating sounds very tempting but am trying to have less machinery clogging up the desk space rather than more!! When I go to site and find that the contractor has laminated plans I am always very impressed!
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  Jenny Bloom February 23, 2012 at 7:47pm

  Rose I've also had the Epson Stylus Office B1100 for just over a year (after also asking for recommendations on here!!). Affordable option for printing A3 at home - as Caroline says fine for Vectorworks and photos. I find I need to change the Rhino ink cartridges less often than my old A4 HP and as the cartridges comes in CMYK it is easy to replace the ones that you use most of (in my case the Cyan). You get a double black so that lasts a long time. A3 is great for smaller drawings - I still use a print shop for anything bigger, but it is great for having a check of print outs (line weights etc) before going to the print shop. Have never done laminated - I present my drawings to clients in a portfolio sleeve... 
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  Nicky @ GardenImprovements.com February 24, 2012 at 11:01am

  Hi Rose I recently acquired a Canon Pixma ix6550 : low cost and excellent print quality, very happy.  Not wireless unfortunately.

  Nicky
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  Fenlandphil February 26, 2012 at 6:05am

  I was in Staples yesterday afternoon they have a Brother A3 either 3 in 1 or 4in 1 printer on offer at £149 or there abouts, I know no more than that.
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  Rose Lennard February 29, 2012 at 1:34pm

  I've just ordered the Epson WF 7515 - will let you know how it performs!
   
  Benedict Green said:

  I've seen Epson now do a combined A3 printer/scanner (WF 7515) that looks like it should do pretty good prints and claims to be quite efficient on ink. Bit more expensive than the Brother one, but still good value. Not many reviews on Amazon yet. Not sure if it will take heavy photo paper, more of an office machine than photographers printer. I believe that stand alone printers generally give better prints if you're after that sort of quality, but for plans and mood boards it looks ideal. 
  Might get one myself. 
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  Rose Lennard March 1, 2012 at 9:14pm

  Just reporting back - the Epson WF 7515 arrived today, free next day delivery from Leo Office Supplies - very efficient. It is now installed and running and so far I'm very satisfied (though I've only tried printing A4 so far!) but in comparison to my previous set up, it should do what I previously had 2 machines to do, and more, as it not only prints A3, but also scans & copies up to A3, prints A4 duplex, and includes a fax. It is wireless so we can also print from a laptop elsewhere in the house.

  My old A3 HP used to drive me crazy as it didn't communicate with me! Meaning it would refuse to print but there was very little interface to tell me what was the problem. This one looks more user friendly with an LCD screen and a fairly detailed control panel. I've also discovered already that it will print much closer to the edge of the paper which is great because previously I used to have to shrink to fit my headed paper so had big white margins. The colour print quality looks good too, no grainyness.

  The 7515 has been updated at least once by the look of it, but the newer versions were a lot more expensive and since I don't print high volumes, and would be happy to use a professional printers for the few occasions I might want top quality prints, there didn't seem any point. So far I'd recommend it - will post again if any reason to change that verdict!

  www.chameleongardens.co.uk