Canon PRO-2600 Waste strip

[thadwald]

I just upgraded from an HP Z3200 to a Canon PRO-2600. A large portion of my prints are 6"x24" borderless size. I had a process on the Z3200 that would allow me to print borderless without a waste strip of paper.

Has anyone figured out if it's possible to get the Canon 2600,4600 printers to not waste about 1.5" of paper on every print?

Having compared the old Z3200 to the new Canon, I think the HP is nothing short of amazing for its time.

[felix5616]

i too had a Z3200 and thought it was near perfect. Sold it when service was no onger available. Considered a Canon Pro 2600 but was not enthusiastic enough to try and learn a new printer. Would love tohear your thought on the canon

[Richard.Wills]

I believe minimum paper length is 8".

[virojarvi]

Seems this has changed from the previous models.

Minimum Printable Length
Roll paper: 101.6mm (Cross and canvas paper: 200mm)
Cut sheet: 203.2mm
https://www.canon-europe.com/business/products/large-format-printers/imageprograf-pro-2600/specifications/

[thadwald]

i too had a Z3200 and thought it was near perfect. Sold it when service was no onger available. Considered a Canon Pro 2600 but was not enthusiastic enough to try and learn a new printer. Would love tohear your thought on the canon

It prints much faster.
Actually, if you set it to the very finest print setting, the physical printing speed is similar to the Z3200. But I can't tell any improvement on luster paper, so I just use High.
The big time saving is all the things the printer does to set up the head to begin a job. This takes 1-5 minutes on the HP, less than a minute on the Canon.

The gamut on photo paper is different but not necessarily better or worse. The HP can print a brilliant red, which the Canon can't match. But the Canon does better with yellow, deep green, and blue so ... . I haven't tried it on any matte paper. The HP was superb on matte paper, with deep blacks and a strong gamut.

The paper strip is a strange thing. Aside from the minimum print width, it probably also has a minimum cut width. Fair enough.

The HP Z3200 could print right on the leading edge of the paper but I couldn't use 2" core rolls because the end of the rolls curved too much and it would strike the head.
The Canon cannot print borderless on the leading edge. Instead it leaves a 50mm bleed edge and then trims it.

So I figure I could save paper by turning off the automatic cutter. Then it does a really strange thing. it first trims a 50mm strip off the roll, then proceeds to print on the leading edge with a margin (~10mm).

It has a "banner printing" feature that begins the subsequent print, then slices the leading print off when the cut line reaches the cutter. But this feature is disabled with borderless printing.

As I stated earlier, 6" long prints are a big portion of the work that I produce on this printer. The waste strips would amount to nearly one fourth of the paper (25' on a 100' roll) when printed using the standard Canon borderless print method. What I have resorted to is placing as many jobs as possible into a single print, then cutting it manually.

Any advice?

[thadwald]

In case anyone else has this question, Yes, the waste strip width can be modified. This is done through the Canon Media Configuration Tool.

Coming from a HP Z3200, this tool covers the functionality of the HP Paper Preset Management page inside the HP Print utility. The difference being that with the HP it is installed with the print driver, whereas it's a separate download/install for the Canon.

The wast strip can be adjusted to a minimum of 10mm.

For anyone using a non-Canon paper, I highly recommend using the Media configuration tool. Chiefly because it allows you to install custom papers on the printer, complete with icc profiles, which the driver can install on any system that uses the printer. The tool also allows you to configure a whole slew of options for the paper such as minimum cut width(mentioned above), cut speed, platen vacuum strength, print head hight, feed calibration, ink load, and many others.

I feel that I am learning this by trial and error. Has anyone published a guide on how to configure new paper on these printers? I could, of course, keep trying different combinations of settings to optimize the output but it's a bit wasteful. For instance, the tool has a (seemingly) nice feature that prints samples with a variety of ink loads, to aid in selecting a best option. But with the print in hand, I'm not much the wiser.

Thoughts?
 

[bellevuefineart]

Yes, I agree that the media configuration tool is helpful for third party papers. You can also make modifications to tweak the printer behavior as you have with the waste strip that gets cut off with borderless printing. Both Epson and Canon have their own media configuration tools. Both are helpful. Both could use some work to be more friendly.

I have used mine to slow down the printer for very thin media to avoid rippling with saturated prints, like archival matte papers and wrapping paper.