I have two identical Z3200 24" non-PS. For years I've gotten consistent 1/4 inch borders surrounding. Now, suddenly, both printers are leaving a 3/8 inch border on the left side and clipping the right side. Both have the latest firmware. Almost everything I print is 16x24 or 24x26, so the prints are full width on the 24" roll leaving no margin for error.
I've tried my legacy Mac High Sierra, a Mac Mini running Ventura with the latest HP driver, and a recent PC running Windows 11, using the up-to-date HP driver and then through Qimage.
I can't figure out for the life of me what's going on. It's driving me nuts and I had to halt sales.
Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
I followed the thread and had an idea that it could be a hardware issue but that happening on two printers at the same time would be over the top. Otherwise I could not think of what flaw showed up in your usual method.
Following my own methods for printing the sizes you mentioned I would use Qimage Ultimate, consider the 5mm normal print margins on rolls with the HP drivers, add 1,35mm extra margin in Qimage Ultimate to get the 6,35mm - 1/4" of your margins, then using the fit paper size option. With the risk that the roll width could be 1 mm wider or smaller, not unusual with rolls*. Always printing one image only as the roll may shift a bit over longer lengths with nested prints and the printer only measures the position and width of the paper roll at the start of the print run, so both for a 26" or a 100" length of a print job. With wider rolls I often check how parallel a roll leading edge is with the clamping rolls after the loading of a roll and if not parallel enough I let it move say 20 to 40 inches and then move it back to get a better alignment. The HP firmware does the same before a head alignment process chosen from the panel, engineers were well aware of the alignment errors left in the first meters after a roll loading.
My guess now is that you use borderless printing and the images already have the 1/4" white border. I always avoided that borderless setting as it does an odd step in computing that spread of the image over the paper width.
https://support.hp.com/ie-en/document/c01561716 That odd step is a kind of driver extrapolation on the 300/600/1200 resolution of the normal printer data that goes to the printer and by that the image is enlarged accordingly. If for some reason that division number is corrupted in the latest drivers something what you describe may have happened. I am not totally familiar with that setting though and if I recall it correctly Qimage Ultimate has another one in the software too. Wonder whether they interfere with one another. Anyway I do not use it. In the Z3200 software borderless printing is only available for glossy papers. Your printing method may spread the gloss enhancer up to edges too then, my method would not, the printer margins do not get the gloss enhancer. Mike Chaney too does not like borderless printing for some reasons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15G1AWZTVwo Another way simpler flaw could be that in the past you used borderless printing with images that already have a 1/4" border and you now use the normal setting where the 5mm print margin is added an no paper width is left to print the other edge of the image. Print too wide for the roll width when print margins are subtracted. It does not correspond with your description of the flawed borders you get these days so I doubted that you made that mistake.
https://support.hp.com/ie-en/document/c01561716 describes more settings of image spread on the paper that I never use but the standard setting. With some exceptions when it pays off. In Qimage Ultimate preferences you can add more printer margin to the driver native printer margins of 5mm (or 12mm for the trailing edge of a sheet) but the default will be 5mm.
If your observations are mainly due to prints made with Qimage Ultimate then you should know that the integration of the HP Z3200 driver settings in Qimage's interface is flawed. Never set printer settings in QU for an HP driver. Shift-Click on QU's printer Properties that the HP driver falls to its default and build the settings up there, then OK and QU will listen to the higher command. The other way around the HP driver will not listen, just partly maybe, the PS driver better than the PCL but who will take that risk? Deeper in the Windows configuration you can make a Printer Preference setting that covers your most often used settings, give it a name and that will be the default QU will show after the Shift-Click. Use the preview option in the HP driver for more security. Actually I would be better off with a Qimage Ultimate version of 5 years ago (with less options, less newer algorithms) that did not have the driver settings integrated but getting older you learn to live with all kinds of handicaps in your own way.
1/ My custom print page sizes, as saved in the HP Z3200 driver, are always 1mm less wide as the roll width is described. Way less surprises that an image is turned 90 degrees when I think it should fit landscape wise on the roll.
Whether this helps you in any way, I do not know.
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
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