Materials Printing
The Department of Materials operates a fleet of around 50 networked printers - a mixture of personal printers, research group shared printers plus some larger departmental printers. In addition there are colour photocopiers available in each building which are also listed as network printers and are typically cheaper to operate than traditional laser printers.
How much does it cost?
The basic charging model is: A4 £0.04/ colour page, £0.02p/ Monochrome page; A3 £0.10/page;
Part II Students and visitors have annual print quotas of £20/year and £10/year respectively. Contact IT staff if your print jobs are being automatically cancelled due to lack of quota.
Members of staff and postgraduate students are currently unlimited however please be aware that usage is recorded and reviewed termly and cost-recovery from research grants may be implemented in future. Private printing or photocopying is expected to be paid for via Reception.
Overall printer and photocopier usage should be kept to a minimum - see Green IT guidance below.
Printing from Windows (SSO login and wired network)
If you are logging into a PC in the department using your Single Sign On you should already see a printer named “Followme on oums-tssrv1”. The followme printer is added automatically and does not require manual installation. If you are logging on to a machine for the first time it may take a moment for the followme printer to appear. Followme is a print queue that connects to all the departmental photocopiers and will allow you to release print jobs from the photocopier of your choice upon placing your university card on the card reader at the device.
If you also want to print to a local group laser printer you will be able to install that printer from the list of printers at \\oums-tssrv1.materials.ox.ac.uk (only accessible from department wired network). Find the correct printer in the list of printers on \\oums-tssrv1 , right click the printer and select “Connect” then wait while the printer is automatically installed. Local group printers are named by building abbreviation followed by shortened group name and printer model, alternatively if you have physical access to the printer you can also refer to the printer’s name label to identify the printer.
If the above instructions do not work for you (e.g. because local user account not SSO), then please see the “Any other Device” instructions below or contact IT staff for further guidance.
Printing from a Mac (SSO login and wired network)
Go to System Preferences : Printers and Scanners and click + to add printer.
Ctrl + left click on the taskbar that appears next to Default/IP/Windows and choose “Customise Toolbar…” in the menu that pops up and drag the Advanced icon onto the toolbar and click “Done” and then click on Advanced.
Under “Type” change it to “Windows Printer via spools"
Set the URL to be:
Smb://oums-tssrv1.materials.ox.ac.uk/followme
In the option for “use” select “Generic Postscript Printer” and click Add
Tick the option for Duplex Printing Unit
The printer will then appear in programs as either oums-tssrv or followme
When you go to print you will be asked for username and password, enter your SSO in this box in the form:
<SSO>@OX.AC.UK
With your normal SSO password (if you save this to your keychain you will not need to enter it each time)
Any other device - print via email (wireless network, remote network, or non-SSO login)
A new feature of the replacement print system is the ability to email jobs to the followme print queue. If you send an email to followmeprint@materials.ox.ac.uk with the attachments to be printed from your University email it will be releasable from the photocopiers in the same way as print jobs sent to the regular followme print queue. It must be sent from your university email or it will not be accepted by the system and you will get an email confirmation saying the job has been submitted.
If your university email doesn’t work please contact itsupport@materials.ox.ac.uk and we can double check that the system has the correct email address against your account.
Green IT Guidelines
The department is keen to reduce the amount printing in order to save money and reduce waste.
Thousands of pounds are spent on toners each year - please try to do you bit to reduce usage.
- do you really need to print to paper?
save paper by reading electronic copy - always print double-sidedset printers to default to duplex and save paper
- avoid using colour where possible
colour costs several times more black&white - send jobs to photocopiers rather than printers
photocopiers use lower cost toners
