Issues with Z3100

[Harry Carpenter]

I have spent a long time deciding which Large Format printer to go for.
It was reading of peoples issues with the Canon ipf5000 that steered me away from the Canon and the ink wastage and clogging that decided against the Epson printers and towards the HP Z3100.
I have just this week got mine and apart from some faint star wheel marks vertically down all prints it seems to be pretty good. There are a few issues of not wanting to print large prints (250Mb upwards) via an ethernet connection and when printing via usb the printer sometimes just sits there during printing for exended periods without actually doing anything which is irritating and then ends by telling me to reset the printer with the print still in the mechanism.
This is disapointing in a new machine but it may be me that is at fault.

It is the same printing from photoshop or via qimage on an XP machine.

Has anyone else encountered these issues and how to overcome them.

[rdonson]

I have spent a long time deciding which Large Format printer to go for.
It was reading of peoples issues with the Canon ipf5000 that steered me away from the Canon and the ink wastage and clogging that decided against the Epson printers and towards the HP Z3100.
I have just this week got mine and apart from some faint star wheel marks vertically down all prints it seems to be pretty good. There are a few issues of not wanting to print large prints (250Mb upwards) via an ethernet connection and when printing via usb the printer sometimes just sits there during printing for exended periods without actually doing anything which is irritating and then ends by telling me to reset the printer with the print still in the mechanism.
This is disapointing in a new machine but it may be me that is at fault.

It is the same printing from photoshop or via qimage on an XP machine.

Has anyone else encountered these issues and how to overcome them.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=121407\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Harry, are you on the latest firmware and drivers for the Z3100?  It may be a print spool config issue for XP.  Qimage has some info on what spool settings work best.

[Harry Carpenter]

Thanks for the pointer ron.
I looked through the qimage tutorials and there was a line on changing the print spool setting from "EMF to raw" if printing large files. I resubmitted the print, bypassing the HP driver I believe and it all printed fine.
I now think that the issue I had before with refusing to print was that the HP driver preview ran out of steam and just crashed, luckily before sending partial data to the printer and wasting even more media.
The issue via USB is possibly just the fact of using USB, as I occasionally have glitches on external drives connected that way.
So the only fly in the ointment now is the faint star wheel marks which are visible on most of the papers I have been using. Is it only HP that gets these marks? If so what drive mechanism do the others use?
Thanks again for your help.

[Jim Cole]

Harry,

Congrats on your new Z3100. Certain papers (like Innova) have had a tendency to show pizza wheel marks. There are two thinks to check:

1) Adjust the drying time of the papers in the HP Color Center, under the Change Printing Properties tab. here you can adjust time for each paper.

2) HP have redesigned the pizza wheel assembly twice. I had the latest incarnation installed a couple of weeks ago. I have no issues with pizza wheel marks, but I never did. HP engineering changed the spring tension on the wheels to help the feed. You can call HP support for the designjets and ask to have it replaced by an on site tech.

Hope this helps,
Jim

[Harry Carpenter]

Jim, thanks very much for that info.
I will indeed look into what HP support can offer. The pizza wheel marks are not usually too pronounced but they are there.
How does the print drying time affect these marks?
I am mainly using Kodak lustre paper which is proving to be quite an attractive base for photographic prints and is also fairly low priced compared to some of the others and the effect of the marks is different from print to print.

[Jim Cole]

Harry,

Depending on the paper, the ink dries faster or slower. If the ink is still a bit wet as it passes thru the pizza wheels, they will leave marks. All of these drying times are set to optimal for HP papers, but third party papers are up to the user to figure out. I would set the Kodak paper to "extended" which will slow the print time and advance the paper more slowly.

Good luck,
Jim

[rdonson]

The issue via USB is possibly just the fact of using USB, as I occasionally have glitches on external drives connected that way.
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I'm glad that changing the spooling worked for you, Harry.  With USB I've found it necessary to have a good powered hub on my machine.  Since adding that I've had no problems with USB printers or drives.  As a temporary thing until I get time to run the ethernet cable I'm running my Z3100 on a 16 ft USB cable and no problems at all.  Then again perhaps sharing this will jinx my good luck.  

[Jon Abbott]

Watch out for problems due to long USB cables. I've had problems with cheapo 15 foot cables; even coming directly out of the computer hub.

If printing is getting interrupted sometimes it helps to spool the file completely before allowing printing to start. I had this problem with my Epsons. I would either make sure a print preview was completed, or set the Printer Properties|Advanced setting to uncheck the "Start Printing Immediately" radio button. Either method forces the file to spool (rasterize) completely before sending it to the printer.

Good luck, I'm just setting up my new z3100ps now, and thought I'd see what issues other users are dealing with!

[rdonson]

Watch out for problems due to long USB cables. I've had problems with cheapo 15 foot cables; even coming directly out of the computer hub.

If printing is getting interrupted sometimes it helps to spool the file completely before allowing printing to start. I had this problem with my Epsons. I would either make sure a print preview was completed, or set the Printer Properties|Advanced setting to uncheck the "Start Printing Immediately" radio button. Either method forces the file to spool (rasterize) completely before sending it to the printer.

Good luck, I'm just setting up my new z3100ps now, and thought I'd see what issues other users are dealing with!
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=121638\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I agree, Jon.  I bought the best USB cable I could find.  I still plan on moving to ethernet soon as I'm certain I'm living on borrowed time with regards to potential problems.