Qimage and Page Margins

[ThePhotoDude]

Somebody please help me out here ...

Qimage and Z3100 and 610mm roll paper.

No matter what I try, I always get the page margins wrong here and my printer cuts of a tiny portion of my image, usually I notice only when cutting and think to measure the image and see its 3mm short or whatever.
As a result, I always stay on the safe side and never print anywhere near the edge, thus wasting valuable paper.

If I need to print a 60cm x 20cm image, yes, it goes down the roll and not across. I cannot nest two 30cm x 90cm photos next to each other becasue one on them will be cut off.

I have tried 5mm margin left side, right side, 3mm the same, no margin, centre image, etc.
I just want consistency, I don't mind about edge to edge printing, I just want to at least print 600mm on 610mm paper.

My brain has suffered, has anyone got any tips, ?

Thanks.

[Ernst Dinkla]

Somebody please help me out here ...

Qimage and Z3100 and 610mm roll paper.

No matter what I try, I always get the page margins wrong here and my printer cuts of a tiny portion of my image, usually I notice only when cutting and think to measure the image and see its 3mm short or whatever.
As a result, I always stay on the safe side and never print anywhere near the edge, thus wasting valuable paper.

If I need to print a 60cm x 20cm image, yes, it goes down the roll and not across. I cannot nest two 30cm x 90cm photos next to each other becasue one on them will be cut off.

I have tried 5mm margin left side, right side, 3mm the same, no margin, centre image, etc.
I just want consistency, I don't mind about edge to edge printing, I just want to at least print 600mm on 610mm paper.

My brain has suffered, has anyone got any tips, ?

Thanks.

PS3 or PCL3 driver for the Z3100(-PS) ?

PCL3: The 24" roll isn't 61 cm wide but 60,96 cm. The minimal print margin all around is about 5 mm. You might see a 60 netto size left in Qimage's menus but that is because Qimage will round them off to 1 mm sizes in several menus but not all. I asked for an update with 0.1 mm precision but that didn't happen so far (must be close to two years now).

The 59,96 cm isn't 60 cm so 2x 30 cm will not fit.  Don't fool around with the printer margins set them to the minimal size in Qimage

You could try to give the roll size a slightly wider setting in the printer driver menu than the physical roll size is, say 0.5 mm more.
You could put a white sticker at the left side of the roll (on the felt)  that gives you that extra mm by fooling the sensor.



met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

New: Dinkla Canvas Wrap Actions for Photoshop
http://www.pigment-print.com/dinklacanvaswraps/index.html
 

[ThePhotoDude]

PS3 or PCL3 driver for the Z3100(-PS) ?

PCL3: The 24" roll isn't 61 cm wide but 60,96 cm. The minimal print margin all around is about 5 mm. You might see a 60 netto size left in Qimage's menus but that is because Qimage will round them off to 1 mm sizes in several menus but not all. I asked for an update with 0.1 mm precision but that didn't happen so far (must be close to two years now).

The 59,96 cm isn't 60 cm so 2x 30 cm will not fit.  Don't fool around with the printer margins set them to the minimal size in Qimage

You could try to give the roll size a slightly wider setting in the printer driver menu than the physical roll size is, say 0.5 mm more.
You could put a white sticker at the left side of the roll (on the felt)  that gives you that extra mm by fooling the sensor.



met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

New: Dinkla Canvas Wrap Actions for Photoshop
http://www.pigment-print.com/dinklacanvaswraps/index.html

PS driver, and my roll physically measures 61cm.

[Ernst Dinkla]

PS driver, and my roll physically measures 61cm.

The PS driver does the print margins differently. The size you set in the driver is the size without the print margins. The end result in Qimage should be similar though with print margins minimised in the Qimage Page Formatting menu.

The cures as mentioned are the same. I was used to the PCL3 driver so I installed that one next to the PS3 driver to drive the Z3200-PS.

Do you get the netto size above Qimage preview window at 60.1 cm ? If so and the prints still do no nest properly then there is a problem in your Qimage settings.

Edit:
Checking this again with a fresh brain this morning: The Qimage print page size above the preview window gives 0.1 mm precision. Whether that is introduced more recently I do not know. Anyway if I set the roll width in the PS3 printer driver at 600.1 mm then the HP driver rounds it off to 600.2 mm and that it transferred to Qimage as visible above the preview window. It will nest two 300 mm wide images, with optimal nesting and the images turned 90 degrees if they do not on their own. If I select 600 mm in the PS3 driver then it is rounded off to 599,8 or something like that and that is transferred to Qimage and the two 300 mm wide images will not nest.

Then two issues remain:

If you select a shorter print page length than the roll width, the HP driver will utter protests and it will swap the numbers in the entries if you save that custom size. With the PCL3 driver you simply change the orientation from portait to landscape and it will print correctly. Not so with the PS3 driver. It will print your two nested images lengthwise which is a waste of paper. I have not found a solution to that problem. One of the reasons I also installed the PCL3 driver for the Z3200-PS.

I have not tried whether the printer accepts that slight oversize on roll width in the driver settings. If so you have to put that white sticker extending the roll width at the left edge on the printer bed. For general knowledge it may be handy if you report back whether you need this last step.

Going any further in forcing images on a roll width will compromise print margins and that may result in wasting prints too.



met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/