FAQ

1. Where are you located?
2. What services do you provide?
3. How much does it cost?
4. What is the difference in the paper types?
5. How do I pay?
6. What file formats do the posters need to be in?
7. How do I get a poster printed and when can I do it?
8. How can I make my poster look the best?
9. Who prints the posters?
10. What equipment do you use?
11. What are some helpful hints?
12. How long does printing a poster take?

Where are you located?

The Missouri S&T poster printing services is located on the first floor of the library, on the left as you enter the building. The equipment is part of the Emerson Multimedia Center. The poster service does not have a separate phone number, but an e-mail address that can be reached here.

What services do you provide?

We print and laminate posters for the Missouri S&T community:

•  The poster printer is funded by an Emerson grant and is intended for educational or research purposes, we do not offer printing services to the general public. 
• The laminator was purchased with library funds and we can laminate materials for the general public at the same cost Missouri S&T patrons are charged.
• None of the equipment is self-service, everything requires a staff member to operate it.

 Posters can printed for personal use, with the following criteria:

• The person requesting the material is a Missouri S&T student, staff, or faculty member. 
• The materials printed/laminated are not for resale or profit
• The printing/laminating does not interfere with the regular operation of the service.

We reserve the right to refuse printing posters that we feel may be in violation of copyright.  This includes materials such as movie posters and copyrighted images for personal use. In order to print such materials a permission letter from the copyright holder(s) must be obtained, stating the user, the materials to be printed, and what conditions have to be followed.  (Such as placing a copyright or ownership notice on the poster.)  A copy of any permission letters will be retained for our files.

The staff members of the poster printing service can fine tune or adjust your posters before we print them, we do not make your posters for you.

What is the difference in the paper types?

Regular coated paper

Pro: General purpose paper, quick drying and flexible, lowest cost.

Con: Due to wrinkling, we no longer accept this type for lamination.  This paper also wrinkles a lot when using lots of color or heavily concentrated ink.

Heavy coated paper

Pro: Wrinkles very little, more vibrant colors, laminates very well, best material for artwork posters.

Con: When unlaminated is very fragile and creases easily and noticeably, costs more than regular paper.

Glossy Paper

 Pro: Suitable for photographs and montages.

Con: Most costly of all the papers, takes 1-2 hours to dry, will fade in a year unless laminated, tends to bubble when laminated.

Lamination

Pro: Protects poster from moisture and adds a shiny surface, brings out more vibrant colors in regular and heavy paper.

Con: Costs more and cannot be undone, has to be handled with moderate care as creases are permanent and obvious.

How do I pay?

Posters can be paid for by the following means:

Cash

Check (made out to Missouri S&T Library with Missouri S&T ID number on check)

Charged to a student account

Internal Order Form (IOF)

 IOF's are used for interdepartmental charging and are used if your department wishes to pay for the printing. IOF's can be obtained from your department secretary. At the current time, we cannot accept credit cards or other forms or payment.

What file formats do the posters need to be in?

The preferred format is Powerpoint. (.ppt) This is the format the staff has the most experience with.

We have the following programs available on the poster printing computer:

When using PowerPoint, be aware that transparency layers will be reproduced as 100% opaque and so should be avoided.

Note that .tif files have good color reproduction but lose the proportional fonts, i.e., the text is turned into images.

Other file formats are dealt with on a case by case basis.

How do I get a poster printed and when can I do it?

Poster printing is done by appointment. Walk-ins will only are accepted when the poster technicians do not have an actively printing poster or other scheduled task and a scheduled appointment will always be given priority. To schedule an appointment please send an e-mail to: libplot@mst.edu or click the link below.

Libplot mail account

Please state your name, the size and type of the poster, and what date/time you would prefer to print the poster. You will receive a reply with an appointment as close to your desired time as is feasible.  We encourage you to please send your poster to us via email as well.

The current calendar for printing posters can be seen here. (You will need to input your e-mail user name and password)  

Poster printing is done Monday through Friday from 8AM to 11AM and 12:00PM to 4:30PM.  These times are subject to change.   Currently posters are never printed on the weekends.

Appointments are only scheduled by e-mail, please do not call to schedule.

Don't wait until the last minute, schedule appointments for class projects in advance, the printing service can be very busy during exams or at the end of the semester.

How can I make my poster look the best?

When you create the blank page that will become your image file, create it at the exact size at which it will be printed. This will allow you to maintain the quality of your image.

Check your poster in Powerpoint by using both "Print Preview" to see how it will appear, and examine the poster on the "view size" at 100 percent to see how it will look at full size.

Check tables, images, and text boxes for alignment errors and placement. Make sure text boxes and image boxes have their outline margin entirely on the poster, margins that go off the edge can result in the text running off the poster.

Text and images boxes can be clicked on the outline margin and then "nudged" by using the arrow keys on the keyboard, which is more precise than by hand.

The darker the poster the more ink it uses. On glossy paper this has little effect, but on regular paper posters that are heavy in black or dark blue tend to expand the paper and can make waves or wrinkles when it is finished.

Logos and graphics tend to pixellate (get blocky) at large sizes. A selection of high resolution Missouri S&T logos can be obtained here. Avoid JPEG images where possible.

In some cases small images can be made acceptable by resizing them in photoshop by using the following method:

Open the image in Photoshop and check "Image Size." If the DPI (Dots Per Inch) is less than 144, increase it to 300 or 600 if the image is very small. Allow the resize to finish, then resize the image to the desired size. (This may take a long time.) Finally, decrease the DPI to 72 and save the file. This technique can help somewhat, but the trade off is images tend to get fuzzier.

What equipment do you use?

The poster printer is a Hewlett Packard 1055CM. It is a plotter printer very similar to an inkjet printer.
It can print on a variety of types of paper with a maximum width of 36" and virtually unlimited length.

The laminator is a Star 44 which is fit with .5 mil laminate.  

The poster trimmer is a StarTrim 62.

The poster printing computer is a Dell GX270 with 2GB of RAM and a 3.2GHz P4 processor on a standard campus install of Windows XP.

What are some helpful hints?

Glossy paper posters tend to fade in as little as a year. This can be slowed down by laminating the poster.
The maximum printing size for PowerPoint is 36 by 56 inches. Larger posters have to be converted to an image file and printed at a lower quality. The largest poster we have successfully printed was 10 feet long.

To have your poster come out with an even ½ inch border, set the "Page Size" to 1 inch less than the final poster size. For example, if your poster is supposed to be 36 inches by 48 inches, set it to 35 by 47 inches.

Blue colors that have some red in them can come out as purple, and other colors with red can also be affected. We believe this is because the printer uses the CMYK color profile (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) while many images and color settings tend to use RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color profiles. The solution is making short test prints and changing the colors where possible to come out accurately.

How long does printing a poster take?

The time can vary widely, as the steps below show:
 

Printing:

This largely depends on how much large it is.  Do to custom printer networking, spooling time is almost nonexistant, but printing is never very fast.

The time needed to print a 30X40 poster is around 15-20 minutes, depending on complexity.

Drying time:

• Regular paper with few/little graphics: 15 minutes 
• Regular paper with heavy graphics: 30 minutes minimum
• Glossy paper: 1-2 hours minimum, regardless of what material is on it.

Laminating:

The laminator takes about 30 minutes to initially warm-up.  Typical posters can then be laminated in as little as 5 minutes.

A simple poster on regular paper can be done in as little as 20 minutes, a complex poster on glossy paper with lamination may not be ready for 2-3 hours. Patrons only need to be present for the set up and printing of the poster if they wish to check for changes or corrections that need to be made.