How to Print Patterns: Five Easy Pattern Printing Steps That Save You Thousands of Dollars

Many times, apparel clothing designers and garment manufacturing companies have the need to outsource pattern plotting services due to not having a fast plotter to print all of their designs or simply because their machine broke down. Having a plotter is highly costly due to the maintenance service repairs required periodically to maintain it running. Listed below are five easy pattern printing steps that can save you money and all your headaches and costly repairs of a state of the art plotting machine.

1rst Step: Do not over spend money in fixing or buying a new plotter.

If you are not a company that provides just plotting services and you only plot a couple of markers per week or month then you do not need to invest in a state of the art machine. These printing machines could cost in the 15 to 30 thousands of dollars if not more. So be wise and spend money only for every marker or copies of you model that you might need.

2nd. Step: organize your patterns to be plot by importance.

Always organize your models that need to be plot out and do not send any unnecessary markers to print as that will cost you money and chances are that you will not use that marker in a near future due to any new pattern adjustment that you made or simply because your width of your new fabric is wider than the one of your plotted marker. 
3rd Step: Plot all your markers at one time.

Plan in advance when printing all your clothing patterns as this could save you money in plotting services.  For instance if the regular prize to plot a marker is 40 dollar per marker and  if you know that the following week you will need at least 4 more markers of the same marker then plot them all at one time. By working this manner you will usually save the person time in preparing the marker and the more paper yardage your marker has the cheaper it will be meaning instead of paying 10 dollars per yard assuming you have a 4 yards marker and you pay 40 dollars minimum charge you could be paying 8 dollars or less per every single yard plotted.

4th Step: send all your patterns electronically.

Do not spend time and gasoline taking your flash drive or hard drive to a pattern printing service. E-mail them your patterns files to the your plotting service provider this will speed the process and they can either ship you all your patterns or markers in a box all folded flat or you can send your cutting service man to pick all your plotted patterns.

5th Step: Combine multiple markers into a single file marker.

By combining or adding multiple markers into one single marker file you will save some money by not having to pay a minimum printing charge. Providing multiple markers in different files is a time consuming process for the printing service company and material wise  they waist paper advancing the machine every time they print and cut a marker  therefore seeing a bill for one or two thousand dollars for printing services is not a surprise especially if you have 20 markers with 20 yards each that is about 400 yards of paper equal to 4 rolls of 100 yards consumption plus printing charges 400 yards of paper printing times 5 dollars per yard if no more added all together and you end up with a bill for 2000 dollars if not more.

In summation, printing patterns can be expensive but having to pay for repairs and maintenance of a state of the art plotting machine is extremely more expensive. Over all, you will save thousands of dollars by following these five simply printing pattern steps pay just for what you need only and do not overspend your money by buying a printing factory if you will only print a couple of patterns per week or in a month.

 About the Author
Occupation: Designer/ Prod. Pattern Making Consultant. Leading Technical designer, Alejandro Esparza owner of www.smartpatternmaking.com  has provided for over 22 years, Apparel clothing line Services for many top companies of our time in Los Angeles CA USA

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