Versant 180 Installed

[pippip]

We have a V80 and also get that situation where the machine says warming up and never prints. Very random when it does it but we found if you open and close the front door on the machine it it starts printing. I asked a tech and he said they are aware of it but no solution, just something not waking up correctly.


Your problem with the scale to fit I wouldn't really see as being a problem. I don't think the machine can adapt to the 3-4mm around that it cannot print as this margin can change depending on circumstances. The way they have it set up I find is best. If printing from acrobat i tell it to scale to fit in that and then in CWS tell it to reduce to 98%.

 

[donster]

Thanks for the tip on how to "unfreeze" the machine when stuck.

About your solution for scale to fit. Well, yes, that is a solution/workaround... but coming from X700, we were used to different behaviour. If I were sending A4 on A4 paper from acrobat and told it "Scale to fit", it would automatically take into account the unprintable margins and scale it to 96%. V180 would scale it to 100% and I would have to adjust the percents manually.

 

[pippip]

Sorry, I thought you ment in the "scale to fit" on the actual Fiery, didn't realise you ment in acrobat. Now that you say that our HP laserjet does account for the margins in acrobat, but not the Xerox as you mentioned. I would have thought that was something in the print driver that could be set.

 

[donster]

Yes, every other printer I ever worked with had this feature. We actually had a Xerox technician look into this and there is a workaround by editing the PLD (not sure if I remember the name right) files of the printer driver, where you have these margins defined. For VP 180 it is actually defined as 0 by default, so the driver doesnt know how big the unprintable margins are. But of cousre, once you update your driver, you will also lose this "hack". We've been told that this is actually a feature and not a bug...but I don't understand it

Also one more problem with the PC (win10) driver is that if we download and install the latest version (5.0.30), once you shut down/restart your computer and try to print from a certain app (usually photoshop), it comes up with a warning dialogue that the printer is not verified and whether you want to download the drivers. You only have two options:

1) cancel - and you are unable to print from photoshop as the print dialogue doesn't show up
2) allow it to download the driver - but then it gets the old version 5.0.21 from somewhere....

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Thanks for the tip on how to "unfreeze" the machine when stuck.

About your solution for scale to fit. Well, yes, that is a solution/workaround... but coming from X700, we were used to different behaviour. If I were sending A4 on A4 paper from acrobat and told it "Scale to fit", it would automatically take into account the unprintable margins and scale it to 96%. V180 would scale it to 100% and I would have to adjust the percents manually.

The J75, V80 and V180 handle this situation in the same manner. The design of this by Xerox is correct and I do not understand how you could have a problem. What you are suggesting is that the image is transferred to the max printable area of the sheet, let's say 8.5 x 11" document to 13 x 19" sheet. But since the edge deletion per edge is not uniform (3mm, 3.5mm, 3.5mm, 4mm), you are ACTUALLY proposing the 8.5 x 11" image is enlarged to the printable area which is physically offset. The Xerox engineer who came up with the solution is correct. You should just get a calculator out and figure if you want to print the job at 122% or 232% or what have you, if it is REALLY that bothersome.

 

[donster]

I'm not sure what you mean with "... printable area which is physically offset" (could be because I'm not native english speaker).

You say, you don't understand how I could have a problem with this. Well let me give you an real life example that happends on daily bases:

A customer brings a photo with his signature in the edge of the image and says "print this on A3 paper". He has no idea about aspect ratios and things like that. What he wants is A3 paper with his photo on it as big as possible. So what he may get (depending on his photo's aspect ratio) is A3 paper with 3-4mm borders on two sides (where the printer reaches the maximum printable area) and for example 2cm borders on the other two sides (because his photo's aspect ratio was different to the A3 paper). On X700 I would open the photo in Photoshop, tell it to "scale to fit" and print. He would be happy with the result, because it is what he wanted. On V180 if I did the same steps, the margins would be still the same, but the photo would actually be missing few milimeters (including his signature), because the printer didn't take into account the unprintable margins. And this is a problem, atleast for me and jobs I do. I have to manually adjust the dimensions for print to make sure that 1) the photo gets printed as big as possible within the paper and 2) nothing of the image gets lost - no cropping. More steps needed, as compared to just clicking "scale to fit" and not having to worry about anything.

And as I already mentioned - even the "scale to fit" within job properties doesn't work correctly, because it doesn't take the lead edge into account and in the end, you are still missing piece of the image. Hardly can be called "scale to fit", since it doesn't fit.

 

[pippip]

If I have a customer that needs something printed with close to the edge details I just print on SRA3 sheet and trim. I really can see how a suitable scale to fit "printable area" could be created, never had it on our DC242 either. The margins can change depending on stock and machine setup so a fixed setting just wouldn't be doable without massive margins.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

I'm not sure what you mean with "... printable area which is physically offset" (could be because I'm not native english speaker).

You say, you don't understand how I could have a problem with this. Well let me give you an real life example that happends on daily bases:

A customer brings a photo with his signature in the edge of the image and says "print this on A3 paper". He has no idea about aspect ratios and things like that. What he wants is A3 paper with his photo on it as big as possible. So what he may get (depending on his photo's aspect ratio) is A3 paper with 3-4mm borders on two sides (where the printer reaches the maximum printable area) and for example 2cm borders on the other two sides (because his photo's aspect ratio was different to the A3 paper). On X700 I would open the photo in Photoshop, tell it to "scale to fit" and print. He would be happy with the result, because it is what he wanted. On V180 if I did the same steps, the margins would be still the same, but the photo would actually be missing few milimeters (including his signature), because the printer didn't take into account the unprintable margins. And this is a problem, atleast for me and jobs I do. I have to manually adjust the dimensions for print to make sure that 1) the photo gets printed as big as possible within the paper and 2) nothing of the image gets lost - no cropping. More steps needed, as compared to just clicking "scale to fit" and not having to worry about anything.

And as I already mentioned - even the "scale to fit" within job properties doesn't work correctly, because it doesn't take the lead edge into account and in the end, you are still missing piece of the image. Hardly can be called "scale to fit", since it doesn't fit.

Sounds like you just need to make a template in Photoshop for the correct print settings.

I explained the issue perfectly in my prior post. The edge deletion on these printers is not uniform, therefore if the machine were to maximize the image to printable area, you would have an offset image on the sheet.