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Author Topic: z3100 Printing Sped  (Read 3431 times)

pierre.goyette

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z3100 Printing Sped
« on: September 27, 2009, 11:15:53 am »

When I print on my z3100, my print speeds can vary from great to absolute slow. Right now, I am printing an 18" x 24" print and it is taking up to 10 minutes to print. The carriage goes across once and back. Then pauses for 5-10 seconds (with minor movement), then back and forth and so on.

I am printing either from Photoshop or QImage. My source images are already scaled to 300 dpi. I have the margins set to Standard. My printer is connected through Ethernet on a gigabit network.

I have no idea why it takes sooo long to print.

Any ideas???

Pierre    
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SeanPuckett

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #1 on: September 27, 2009, 11:31:13 am »

Are your ink levels low?  I sometimes get this when an ink is about to run out.
Also check network connections.  If it's not getting data fast enough it can time out.
Last, have you recently cleaned out the printhead area from matte black gunk?  I also got long delays in printing when it was gunky.
You might also just try rebooting the printer.

The good news at least is that the problem seems to be temporary.
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pierre.goyette

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #2 on: September 27, 2009, 11:40:11 am »

1) My ink levels are ok. I have at least 20% left in all cartridges...

2) Network connection is fine from what I can tell but I think I throw my sniffer on

3) Just rebooted the printer. I've noticed that when I don't use the printer for a week or more, the printer tends to hang. So, I reboot before important jobs

4) How do I clean the printhead area? Is this in the manual or does someone have some instructions somewhere?

Thanks
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Ernst Dinkla

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #3 on: September 27, 2009, 01:50:17 pm »

Quote from: pierre.goyette
When I print on my z3100, my print speeds can vary from great to absolute slow. Right now, I am printing an 18" x 24" print and it is taking up to 10 minutes to print. The carriage goes across once and back. Then pauses for 5-10 seconds (with minor movement), then back and forth and so on.

I am printing either from Photoshop or QImage. My source images are already scaled to 300 dpi. I have the margins set to Standard. My printer is connected through Ethernet on a gigabit network.

I have no idea why it takes sooo long to print.

Any ideas???

Pierre    


It may be strange questions but what kind of loading did you use: roll, sheet with skew check on, sheet with skew check off ?
And if it is roll loading what has been the kind of sheet loading you used the last time ?


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

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





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pierre.goyette

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2009, 05:03:37 pm »

I am printing from roll paper. I have never printed (or loaded) a sheet in the z3100. In QImage, I reset all the print driver settings and printed again and it's still slow.

The print head prints all the way to the left edge and then back. Then, it pauses for some 5-10 seconds. During that time, the heads may move back/forth by 1 inch, but remaining over the tray. Then it prints another pass and pauses again...

My system is idle during this time. As I mentioned, my source is at 300 dpi. I do have the Quality Options in the print driver to Best but I don't think that this should slow down the print job that much.
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kaelaria

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #5 on: September 27, 2009, 07:03:57 pm »

Mine does that at 300 dpi.  150 it's fast as can be.
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Ernst Dinkla

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #6 on: September 28, 2009, 03:36:22 am »

Quote from: pierre.goyette
I am printing from roll paper. I have never printed (or loaded) a sheet in the z3100. In QImage, I reset all the print driver settings and printed again and it's still slow.

The print head prints all the way to the left edge and then back. Then, it pauses for some 5-10 seconds. During that time, the heads may move back/forth by 1 inch, but remaining over the tray. Then it prints another pass and pauses again...

My system is idle during this time. As I mentioned, my source is at 300 dpi. I do have the Quality Options in the print driver to Best but I don't think that this should slow down the print job that much.

Best means 600 PPI native resolution loading if no other setting is changed in the advanced menu that might bring it to 1200 PPI, Qimage or the driver will bring your 300 PPI to 600 PPI, that should take some time in processing but should not be problematic, If you let the driver start the printing at the moment it starts the processing you may notice some delay in the information the printer gets. A quality setting that asks for 600 PPI input will make a larger print data file than one that asks for 300 PPI. I use 300 and 600 PPI settings. Did you try the setting -Start printing after last page is processed-? That one will split the processing from the data loading to the printer so you know where the bottleneck is.

Which firmware version is on your Z3100?


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

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

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #7 on: September 28, 2009, 12:35:52 pm »

Firmware version is the latest which is TR12-MVL-U-7.0.0.3-7.  I thought it might be related to the AutoRotate feature so I turned that off and printed in Landscape but still slow.  

So, I dragged out my sniffer (WireShark) and noticed some very odd behavior on the network. First, let me say that the printer and the desktop computer are directly on the same hub which is a 10/100/1000 mbps switch.

It appears that the communication between the printer and desktop is pretty messed up. I am getting a huge number of Out-Of-Order segments and a huge number of Duplicate Acks.  This should not happen when two systems are on the same hub.  As a test, I started printing a job and then cancelled it on the printer. It took forever for the job to cancel. Which leads me to believe that the printer is not getting the data fast enough to print at full speed.

Btw, my system currently runs Vista SP1 (x86). I installed a virgin Windows 7 system with only QImage and the z3100 driver. That printed perfectly at full speed. Cancelling the job also took only a few minutes. I wasn’t able to sniff the traffic since WinPCap doesn’t yet support Windows 7. In any case, that gave me an idea. I rebooted my Vista system and installed SP2. That appears to have fixed the problem.  The TCP/IP stack was completely rewritten in Vista to properly support IPV6 and a number of other features which were ‘hacked’ into the XP codebase. I have seen a number of odd things with the new stack. After installing SP2, I retested the print and WireShark revealed that the number of Out-Of-Order segments and Duplicate Acks was greatly reduced.  I’ll retest on Windows 7 with WireShark on another system but fundamentally, the problem is related to the IP stack in Vista SP1.

One thing I don't quite understand about the z3100, since the printer has a built-in hard disk, I don't understand why the unit doesn't spool the entire job AS FAST AS POSSIBLE and print as fast as possible. On a 100 mbps network, assuming a transfer rate of 50 mbps, a 420 MB file should transfer in 67 seconds. I don't understand why the HP engineers didn't spool the job locally to the printer and off-load the desktop as quickly as possible... It's not rocket science.

Thanks for everyone’s ideas…

     
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kaelaria

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #8 on: September 28, 2009, 01:04:55 pm »

I had it happen under XP SP3.  I have not tried a high dpi since going to Vista 64.

It's my understanding the internal drive is only used like that when you purchase the GP upgrade.  Gipped.
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tonywong

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #9 on: September 28, 2009, 05:56:43 pm »

Quote from: kaelaria
I had it happen under XP SP3.  I have not tried a high dpi since going to Vista 64.

It's my understanding the internal drive is only used like that when you purchase the GP upgrade.  Gipped.

I was about to point out that my z3100 always spooled to hard disk before printing from my mac. The more I read now, the more I'm pleased that I sprang for the fully dressed GP APS model instead of the base unit. Too bad it doesn't help the OP.
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ThePhotoDude

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #10 on: September 30, 2009, 08:28:23 am »

Sorry for the hijack here, but perhaps a little help regarding this spooling and transfer rates?

I have the PS GP model, I use XP Sp3 and Qimage.

When I print a job, lets say Qimage 'prints' the job to the spool, takes 1 minute lets say.
Then Qimage is finished and asks for file name etc etc.

In the print queue, I can see the job spooling, this may take AGES, say 20-30 mins for an A1 (800mb) - something like that.
My switch activity light is flashing rapidly so there data transfer to the printer, the printer says 'Receiving data'

After it finishes in the Windows Print queue the job disappears from there.
I look at the printer, or in the jobs page of the inbuilt web interface, it says 'Processing' for another log while (15-30min?) what it's doing I have no idea.

The network connection is 100mbs, this means that a 800mb file should take 64sec to reach the printer if running at full speed. That's a LONG way off the 20mins I get.
For comparison a 10mbs connection at full speed would transfer 800meg in about 10min, so 20min seems likely if not running at capacity.

So what's the deal? It seems everything is way too slow with transfer.
(I have no problems with printing like the OP)

Any help welcome, I want faster speeds this is such a bottleneck!

Thanks, John
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deanwork

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z3100 Printing Sped
« Reply #11 on: September 30, 2009, 09:40:20 am »

I don't have any problem with the standard Z model out of QImage or the Mac/PS driver, ethernet. It sounds like a connection issue to me.

However, I have heard about some of us having to have our Z Hitachi hard drive replaced (me included), that is a possibility, but probably not likely in this case.

It would be nice if QImage sent the file to printer immediately before totally ripping, like Studio Print does, but hell for that price it is an amazing piece of software and I'm thrilled to have it.

I've been doing a lot of dslr files lately, 133 ppi files at 30x40, sent 600 dpi QImage (XP), it really saved the day and the rip time for me is the same or a little faster than out of PS.

john
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