We have numerous inkjet printers in our printing studio, and one of the challenges of having all of these printers is also where to store our paper. We have numerous wide format printers, as well as smaller desktop cut sheet printers. We use our printers for many purposes, such as creating ICC profiles, printing of sample images for trade shows, sample prints for our dealers and salespeople and just about any other project that comes our way.
In the first image below you will notice that we have a couple of 44" wide format printers in a room, with rolls paper on one of the walls. In an ideal environment we would be able to store our rolls standing up. Why? Beacuse the core of a roll can become oblong over a period of time if you store the roll horizontally. This really isn't an issue for us because we use our rolls of paper in a short period of time.
Our custom rack (which needs to be painted) can accommodate up to 13 rolls of paper, up to 44 inches wide. We use 1 1/4" PVC pipes that are cut in 5 foot lengths to hold each roll. We can easily grab a roll and load it onto either of the printers. If we only had one wide format printer, we would give some thought to buy a bunch of that model's spindle, but that cost can quickly add up. Both of these printers are hooked up over ethernet, and we can just print away from the other room. If we have a big print job that requires a ton of interaction with a printer, we just roll a printer into the other room where we can monitor the printer closely from our desks.
Hopefully our storage solution can work in your own environment. There are some wonderful solutions out there, such as the Clustarack series of products, however we found that our solution was the most space efficient in our environment.
