Roll Chart Printers? Windows Printer Drivers?

[Anders Green]

Ok, I'm sure a hundred people have investigated this.... If I wanted to print a roll chart (on 2.25" paper) what can I use?

Here's a link to an example RallyMoto(tm) road book.

Here are the constraints:

• We can afford to buy a dedicated printer for several hundred dollars.
• Our route books will be different than an enduro or hare scramble, so it's unlikely that we can use software dedicated to those guys. We currently use Excel.
• Unsure what type of technology would be best: thermal? ink?
• One small rally tends to be 20 pages, so 20 feet of paper. Could go up to 30.
• We work on Windows. It would be awesome if there was a proper windows printer driver and we could just hook it up and print.

So, is there any way we can save our competitors the cut and tape hassle?

Thanks guys,
Anders

[9Dave]

I bought a thermal from a friend who had a retail business and changed over to letter sized invoices. It is a Star TSP600. Pretty standard retail fare. I bought the paper at an office supply place. Star sells an "adapter" to use the slightly smaller paper that fits a standard roll chart holder. I made one out of a couple pieces of cardboard taped together.

I used Excel and the Star TSP613 raster driver in Windows to print it. I think I played with the settings and ended up with the Full Width 72mm receipt paper settings.

Thermal is really fast, and relatively cheap. We printed about 30 of them the night before the event.

Took a little doinking around, but worked great . Remember to leave a good leader and trailer for people to have enough to start on the chart holder.

Dave

[9Dave]

This pic is not an absolute example because I had to copy a screenshot from your pdf into Excel.

You may run into problems with the graphics due to the relatively coarse printing from the dot matrix.

If you want to send me a Word or Excel file of an original, I could print one out and shoot a pic, or mail it to you.

Dave

[Countdown]

Originally Posted by Anders Green

If I wanted to print a roll chart (on 2.25" paper) what can I use?
So, is there any way we can save our competitors the cut and tape hassle?
Thanks guys,
Anders

Just make 1 master (I print mine 5 wide) and send to JART to have copies made. They make endless Enduro charts and Dual Sport charts for about $0.10 a foot. 714-666-0136

I have custom software to make my master. You can see them on SneakersMC.com

[Anders Green]

Originally Posted by Dave-950

TIf you want to send me a Word or Excel file of an original, I could print one out and shoot a pic, or mail it to you.

No problem: http://sandblastrally.com/2008/SB-20...-Book-Bike.xls

Cheers! :)

Anders

[9Dave]

Originally Posted by Anders Green

No problem: http://sandblastrally.com/2008/SB-20...-Book-Bike.xls

Cheers! :)

Anders

I'll take a shot at it when I get home.

And when we did 30 of them, it took about 10 minutes to print, and a lot longer to roll the little devils up.

Dave

[9Dave]

Not too bad.



But some of the type is running over (my pic is blurry, not the print)




The only part that didn't really print out well was the shaded area along the side. It would be hard to read this on the road.


Hope that gives you and idea of what's possible. I had to play with it a little bit to get it to print on the roll, but it wasn't that difficult.

This was part, but not all of it printed out.



Dave

[Anders Green]

Originally Posted by Dave-950

This was part, but not all of it printed out.

Yeah, that's why I'm thinking "Those poor bastards!" because that's a lot of cutting and taping!

Anders

[Countdown]

Use any tractor feed printer and a box of fan-fold paper, print master, then send to JART to make copies.

I just bought an Epson LQ590 for $70 for my desert house to print test roll charts. I then cut column with paper cutter, then put a piece of tape on each fold.

The problem is not printer it is software to plot Roll Chart.

The following Roll Chart was plotted from the test file below.

Ridgecrest to Trona

* 0.00
R @T on Paved Rd
From Motel^6
* 0.45
L @+ on Bowman @^STOP
* 2.50
JR on Dirt Rd Bowman
SLOW No Dust
* 3.50
JL on Jeep Rd
# 4.30
S nBL,HR Cross Jeep Rd
# 5.10
S NL on Jeep Rd
At fence end
* 5.60
S nBR,HL STOP Cross Paved Rd
# 5.75
S NBL on Jeep Rd
# 6.55
S nBR,HL Cross Pipeline JR
! 9.45
S @+ STOP Cross Paved Rd
# 9.45
BL NHR on Old PR

[9Dave]

Originally Posted by Countdown

Use any tractor feed printer and a box of fan-fold paper, print master, then send to JART to make copies.

I just bought an Epson LQ590 for $70 for my desert house to print test roll charts. I then cut column with paper cutter, then put a piece of tape on each fold.

The problem is not printer it is software to plot Roll Chart.

The president of Great Lakes Dual Sporters, Jeramey, has a database program he's written to do his. And he just prints them on a thermal printer.

Don't know how much JART charges to reproduce, but the nice part about having a thermal printer is that it will print 4 inches per second and 203 dpi according to the spec sheet. So that's like 20 feet per minute. So you could print a bunch of them in a short period of time and make last minute changes if you needed to. The thermal paper is really cheap, too.

But - if you were doing a couple hundred of them, it would be nice to have them mass produced.

Dave

[John E Davies]

http://ktmtalk.com/index.php?showtopic=255506&st=0 is a current thread on roll chart software and printers that might be of interest.

The author, Midlife, is developing Dual Sport roll chart software... here's a couple of interesting tidbits:

"I'll let the cat out of the bag a bit for everyone - I am an exec with multinational printer manufacturer - and while that doesn't dictate how this will be built or what printer can be used - (the volume is too small to make this a "company" thing) it does give me some insight in the "art of the possible"."

"I can tell you that life is about to get much easier for promoters/event organizers. We will be offering a turnkey event system in addition to the standard rollchart building tools for individuals."

So far there is no final word on a product, but I'm keeping an eye on the thread.

[9Dave]

Originally Posted by John E Davies

http://ktmtalk.com/index.php?showtopic=255506&st=0 is a current thread on roll chart software and printers that might be of interest.

Thanks for sharing, John.

2trakkr is Jeramey, president of GLDS, I referred to above. He is REALLY good at this. But in reading that thread, you see how they do it. No doubt it's labor intensive, and if you wanted to outsource it to someone like JART, you could. But, it's also cheap, and that helps keep club costs down.

Dave

[Countdown]

Originally Posted by Dave-950

Don't know how much JART charges to reproduce, but the nice part about having a thermal printer is that it will print 4 inches per second and 203 dpi according to the spec sheet. So that's like 20 feet per minute. So you could print a bunch of them in a short period of time and make last minute changes if you needed to. The thermal paper is really cheap, too.

But - if you were doing a couple hundred of them, it would be nice to have them mass produced.

Dave

Did you read post #4?

[9Dave]

Originally Posted by Countdown

Did you read post #4?

Yeah - I didn't see the .10 per foot in the original post, unless you added that in your edit last night

Really, after you have the method down, and make the master, the hardest part is winding the things up.

Dave

[ISDTBower]

Fold them like Countdown and others.
I couldn't read a chart with arrows at both ends????????
Countdown chart is easy to read, and you don't have to scroll far. Only thing missing is points of interest. (smaller type?)

Roll charts should be suplemented with a map...or GPS

LOST! You know the general direction you are going...we don't.