For your final project, you may be printing a poster for your CSE 163 Data Science Fair. As a reminder, we say “poster” generously, as we don’t expect you to professionally print a whole poster. It is totally acceptable to print out smaller pieces of paper that you clip onto a poster board. Below, we outline some options for printing on campus.

Here are some various options for printing on/near campus:

If you are using one of the options to print a whole poster, the following instructions provide some details on how to prepare a poster file. The following instructions were adapted from ENGR 105 for how to print at the Mill; instructions for how to make the poster are similar for other printing sources.

Note

Again, it is totally reasonable to not use these instructions and just print smaller pieces of paper. The smaller pieces of paper approach is much simpler and will save you a lot of time.

Poster created in Adobe Illustrator:

  1. Open Adobe Illustrator and create a new artboard that is 48” wide and 36”
  2. Design your poster
  3. Go to “Save” and save your document as an .eps file

Poster created on a program that is NOT Adobe Illustrator:

  1. Create a file on the program. It should be 48” wide and 36” tall
  2. Design your poster, taking into account the rubric
  3. Save your file as a PDF
  4. Open Adobe Illustrator and create a new artboard that is 48” wide and 36” tall
  5. Go to the “File” tab in the upper left hand corner and scroll down and select “place” from the menu
  6. Locate your PDF file and place it on the artboard a. Place it so that it fills up the entire art board. You do not have to do this manually. Under the “Properties” tab on the right side of the screen, you can give exact coordinates for the upper left-hand corner.
  7. Go to “Save” and save your document as an .eps file

From this point on, all the instructions are the same, regardless of the program used to create your .eps file.

Setting up the printer:

  1. Ask a staff member for help making sure that the correct material is loaded and the machine is ready to use.

Setting up the software:

  1. Open Roland Versa Works
  2. Check the picture on the top left-hand corner of the screen. It should show an image of the vinyl printer and say “VersaTruVis-540. If it does not, ask a staff member for help
  3. Go to “File” in the upper left-hand corner and click “add job to Queue A”. The job will load
  4. Click on the first button on the lower left-hand side of the screen. The button looks like a Rubix Cube and will open a new window
  5. Under the section “Media Settings”, click “Get Media Width” a. On this tab you can also move the design to different spots on the vinyl, duplicate the design, or change its orientation
  6. Click the “Quality” tab and change “Media Type” to “Solvent Glossy Paper”
  7. Click “OK” in the bottom right-hand corner
  8. Now click the second button on the lower left-hand side of the screen. This one looks like gears. This will RIP your file and turn it into computer language. BEWARE: The gears ARE NOT settings
  9. Once the file has finished ripping, click the third button on the lower left-hand side of the screen. It looks like a tiny knife. This will start the print.

After the print is done:

  1. Let print dry! There is a lot of ink on the paper and if you don’t let it dry before rolling it, it may smear.
  2. Use mat cutter to cut to final size. The final size will be 48” x 36”. The vinyl media is larger than that, so it will need to be cut down to size. The mat cutter is located on top of the cabinets on the left hand side by the windows. If you have questions, ask a MILL staff member!
  3. Bring to the CSE 163 Data Science Fair – Clean, Dry, flat!