What kind of PAPER do you use

Since I work in a SMALL Fabrication shop and most of my "Freelance Clients" are small independent Designers and engineers, I pretty much set my own Screwed up Out of Date standards. that being said I was just looking to order a roll of Vellum for my Plotter, and @$248.00, I'm starting to wounder if I need to deliver drawings on Vellum (Except Marker Renderings)? I can buy a roll of Translucent Bond for $45 or a roll of Regular Bond paper for $19 so is it worth it to spend the other $200 out of my Pocket ? I'd love to hear What you guys are delivering and on what kind of media you guys are delivering it on because I don't work with large clients or large studios / firms, I'd like to learn more about what you guys are doing in the "Real" world! Like everything I ever learned about Drafting all came from the French-Veir Drafting book from 1922 so all my ideas are about 80 years out of date I'll tell you what I've been linking for 8.5x11 drawings is Canon makes this Matt Photo paper , that is a matt paper that is almost 1/2 card stock weight, like a cheep illustration boad., but is that really acceptable ?

We use the cheap basic 20 bucks a roll paper.

we use HP plain white inkjet paper. its a reasonable thickness, 90gsm i think.

Just as I thought I'm already getting a getting a feeling that Vellum is a waste of $$$$$

not sure what thickness but just plain roll feed white paper

This company uses paper that feels quite smooth and has a shiny look about it.

...unless your client makes a request otherwise.

Many years ago when I was completing my college drafting courses, the instructors had all of the students convinced that once you're out in industry you'll be required to use your best skills on the best supplies.....hooeh!

Once I got out in the field it was all about, "Kid we don't want to hear how good you are, we just want to know how fast you are." The first set of shop drawings I saw my boss submit looked like he drew it with a 6d nail, not an HB pentil lead, and you could hardly read his lettering. That's where I learned that most real employers only care about how fast and how cheap you can get your drawings into fabrication. Sad but a true fact of life. So unless your client is willing to pay for quality, you'll have to compete against others who will be using $20 paper while you're spending $250.

I've worked in a number of different offices/disciplines, and can say hand on heart, I've never seen velum unless it's supplied from a client's archive

all plotters I've worked on have been loaded with some grade of roll feed inkjet paper (except the pen plotter which took manually loaded sheets and was a pain to do batch drawings on)

the photocopier has all but become obsolete as the labour involved in operating the darn thing probably renders the more expensive plots more efficient in the long run

if the client doesn't specify, give them cheap paper they can put footprints and coffee stains on if they like

I saw vellum used to make a jib for a remote controlled sailboat however, I haven't seen a new drawing on vellum for some time.

We use coated bond paper by Xerox. A 24" wide by 500 foot roll cost $36. You must have money to burn if you are still using vellum. Can you plot using single sheets? Just curious.

Cheap white paper on a roll here. Vellum would only be good for reproducing on a blueprint machine and who the heck messes with those today?

To Bill: I had a boss once that would see us sketching something out before going to the computer. He would exclaim "I can sell that, make it a sticky back and move on". He was serious, so we learned to do our thinking on the computer.

We order our paper from pospaper.com and we get the check plot bond rolls. For 4 rolls of 30" x 150' it's $45.19. Works out fine for us.

We plot all our drawings on 20 pound "bond" paper, which is pretty cheap stuff. But it works quite well for construction issue drawings that go out to job sites, fab shops etc. As long as we use the HP ink with our HP4000 plotter, we have no bleeding issues. Quality is great, even in draft mode. We used to use vellum on the old designjet 750C, then make blue prints, but with the speed of the 4000, that's one less step, and paper, required.