Help needed for Grand Sherpa

[Elgane]

Hello, we have been using a Grand Sherpa for a few years now, everything was working fine, but now, what happens is, every page we print on it, the printer feeds about 36 inches after its done printing (unless the page we print is bigger than 36 inches).

We have checked the printer to see if it was in sheet mode instead of roll mode, its not. We checked the rip software to see if anything looked wrong there, seems the same as before.

We called (Calgraph, I think is the name) the guy came but wasn't very knowledgable, in fact he almost made it worse by playing with the printer settings, at some point the cutter wasn't cutting all the way through lol. He checked for paper sensors and said they were ok and the problem came from the rip.

We work on Macs, so I was wondering if it could of came from one of the OS patches?

Heres more info on the hardware : We work on IMacs, I think we have Tiger as OS, the printer is a Grand Sherpa 50, and the rip is Apogee pdf rip. The rip window says its a series 3 (v2.2) and the interpreter window says thats a Series 2 (v2.0). (edit: the rip is running on a PC with windows 2000 I think)

Basicly we always used that, but it just started doing it one day out of the blue. So any help would be very appreciated. Any ideas?

Thx

 

[VladCanada]

To find out RIP issue or not - try any internal test of your GrSh and see if you get extra feed when you repeat the same test or not.
And one more Q: do you get extra feed if you send one job only, not a queue of them?

 

[Elgane]

I have tried a test print from the printer's control panel and it does not feed after it prints. I have also tried to send one page whitout queueing it (if you meant the ganging option, because that's the only way i know to send the page and not queue it). But even with the ganging off, it does feed. The biggest use we have for the printer is to use it as a proofer and print multiple small pages, so we do need the ganging to be on.

I have a strange feeling that somewhere, something is telling it that its in sheet mode, even if the front control panel says its it roll mode when i look at it while it prints.

 

[Elgane]

Quick update : what it seems to be doing is always think its printing the same size page, lets say, it always feeds for 48 inches total from the start of the page (in this case the roll). So if i print a 10 inch high page, it will feed for 38 inches, if i print a 38 inch high page, it will feed 10 inches (not the exact mesures but you get the idea).

Any clues?
Thx

 

[VladCanada]

Gheck pages 4-13 and 4-18 at User Manual.
May be smthg changed in Layout Setup Menu or Cut Size params.
Default max page length is 47.2" (imageable area 46.4")

 

[VladCanada]

Service Manual advise:
After printing is complete, the paper is
fed an extra amount.
(1) The program ROM may
have failed.
•Upgrade the firmware
version.
(2) The MAIN board assy
may have a problem.
• Replace the MAIN board
assy.
Replacing
the MAIN board
assy,
HDD_Extension
board assy,
HEAD_DRV
board assy, and
cooling fan assy

Customers are enable to do this operations, only a serviceman with all stuffs he has

 

[Elgane]

If its the hardware on the printer and not the rip, we have a service contract with Calgraph, the problem is the guy that comes doesn't seem to know the machine very good.

As to the user manual, i'm not sure we ever got one lol. If I have to change the layout setup, what would you recommend changing it to? We use paper rolls not sheets obviously.

Thx alot for the advice so far.

 

[Elgane]

Big thank you to VladCanada!

Reading the manual, we saw something that looked strange in our settings and changing that option fixed the problem!

What happened is our option for the cut positon had be reset to <standard> that meant that the printer always fed paper for the same amount as the width of the roll.

Heres the manual reference to it :

Cut position <Data> Makes settings for media cutting position after printing is
finished.
• Data: Cuts the media according to the printing data size.
• Standard: Cuts the media according to the width of the
media loaded into the printer so that the size of the printout is
standard size.

So we changed it to <Data> and everything is fixed.

Thanks again to VladCanada for all your help.

 

[VladCanada]

YAW Elgane!
As I supposed in #5....
And again - a good example that Service Manual is not soooo helpful volume.