We have three laptops and two printers (one deskjet color for small colorful jobs as needed occassionaly and one laserjet for black multiplage documents). Right now we are taking a usb cable that is plugged into each printer and pulling across the room and plugging in to the laptop to print. I'd like to set up a switch box so that any of the three laptops can print to any of the two printers using USB cables.

if just using switchboxes, you will probably have to arrange it so that you have a 3-way box feeding a 2-way box feeding the printers. 3-way selects which computer feeds into the 2-way, and the 2-way selects the printer. they make smart switches, or you could set up the printers as network if your computers are networked, which might be an easier solution than trying to align two different switch boxes all the time.