Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: ternst on January 08, 2007, 09:40:13 am

Title: z3100 issues
Post by: ternst on January 08, 2007, 09:40:13 am
Since the other recent z3100 thread seems to have wandered off course now I thought I would make a new one, with a comment specifically about the minimum roll width permitted that folks seem to be interested in. That minimum is stated by HP as being 18" wide. I'm running a 17" roll with no problems on my 24" model. There are no physical limits to the minimum width on the roll holder itself. I was speaking with HP support this morning about another issue and asked them about all of that - they told me that the 18" figure was simply something they came up with to list in the specs and was not really correct and that smaller rolls were fine. I don't know how true this is, but certainly it can take smaller rolls than 18". I don't have any smaller rolls to test...

Tim Ernst in Arkansas
http://www.Cloudland.net (http://www.Cloudland.net)
Title: z3100 issues
Post by: michael on January 08, 2007, 09:50:02 am
I'll test this when I'm back from my trip in a couple of weeks. Sounds reasonable though.

Michael
Title: z3100 issues
Post by: Haraldo on January 08, 2007, 10:38:21 am
Quote
...I'm running a 17" roll with no problems on my 24" model. There are no physical limits to the minimum width on the roll holder itself. I was speaking with HP support this morning about another issue and asked them about all of that - they told me that the 18" figure was simply something they came up with to list in the specs and was not really correct and that smaller rolls were fine. I don't know how true this is, but certainly it can take smaller rolls than 18". I don't have any smaller rolls to test...

HP just confirmed with me that 17" rolls are fine. But I'm now asking them: how low can you go? I've got a 5" roll around here somewhere, if I could just find it...

Harald
Title: z3100 issues
Post by: ternst on January 08, 2007, 10:58:18 am
I don't think the roll holder is motorized, so I guess simply loading anything in the back slot and selecting "roll" would do the trick - it is the same slot as the sheet feeder so I don't see a problem with any width down to the stated 8.3" for the minimum sheet width (although that too may be incorrect). I'll load a narrow strip or two later today and see what happens...
Title: z3100 issues
Post by: Haraldo on January 08, 2007, 12:07:04 pm
Quote
I don't think the roll holder is motorized, so I guess simply loading anything in the back slot and selecting "roll" would do the trick - it is the same slot as the sheet feeder so I don't see a problem with any width down to the stated 8.3" for the minimum sheet width (although that too may be incorrect). I'll load a narrow strip or two later today and see what happens...

Correct. I just heard back from HP, and you can use any roll (or sheet) width as long as it is greater than A4/Letter.

So tell us how the experiments go.

Harald Johnson
author, "Mastering Digital Printing, Second Edition"
DP&I.com ( http://www.dpandi.com (http://www.dpandi.com) )
digital printing and imaging consultant
Title: z3100 issues
Post by: ternst on January 08, 2007, 12:21:19 pm
Glad to hear HP saying as much - that's about what they told me this morning so at least two of them agree!
Title: z3100 issues
Post by: deelight on January 08, 2007, 04:00:03 pm
I also postetd the following in the large and running a little out of topic thread about the review of the z3100 - any comments? Thanks...

"Someone posted in this thread that HP suggests to always leave the Z3100 printer on, as it can do cleaning circles when needed. Is that true, anyone to confirm that?

Mine falls asleep after a period of maybe 10 minutes not in use, but the fan (and supposedly the HD aswell?) is still running. Does it also fall asleep after a longer period? Or should it allways run??? Cant imagine that. Anyone?"

Thanks,

Clem
Title: z3100 issues
Post by: Haraldo on January 09, 2007, 09:12:56 am
Here's the definitive answer from HP on MINIMUM paper width for the Z Series printers:

210mm
(8.3 inches)

That's for rolls or sheets. So 17" or 13" rolls, no problem.

Harald Johnson
author, "Mastering Digital Printing, Second Edition"
author, "Digital Printing Start-Up Guide"
DP&I.com ( http://www.dpandi.com (http://www.dpandi.com) )
digital printing and imaging consultant
Title: z3100 issues
Post by: ternst on January 09, 2007, 02:28:09 pm
Clem:

My fan/harddrive or whatever is running has never stopped until the power is cut so I guess that is just the way it is.
Title: z3100 issues
Post by: ericbullock on January 11, 2007, 03:55:24 pm
Good review on the new Z series. I didn't hear too many downsides though...and there certainly are a few.

Paper handling is not very well thought out, and the spindle design is quite dreadful. The end caps are way too small, so if you have a wide diameter roll of paper there is no elegant way to unload the spindle. I understand why they placed the roll on the rear of the printer, but it makes loading paper pretty awkward. You really should leave a good amount of space behind the machine to facilitate paper loading...and learn how to read the LCD panel upside down!

They are also working the kinks out of performance on fine art papers. But the upside...is they are working on it! The engineers have been great, and I've been testing some new media packs, which are showing some improvement (d-max etc).

There are some bugs on the Mac. Michael alluded to one, namely the USB/stalling issue. I've discovered another, which is more annoying. If you apply your profiles in Photoshop (HP or otherwise) and choose Application Managed Colors in the driver, sometimes the driver applies its own conversion anyways. This is highly intermittent, and if it comes out wrong on one print, the next print is usually OK. The engineers say there is a problem with the Mac OS and the driver. I wish they would fix it! Right now for consistency's sake I let the driver do the conversion, which seems to work fine.

But as much as I was prepared to hate this printer, this is a tremendous effort, and they got it mostly right the first time out. The software is quite good, the documentation is superb, and the printer (when set up correctly) produces some stunning prints.

-eric-