Hi all,

I'm hoping someone has already figured this out!
On Mac, CS2 on my Z3100 44", I want to print full bleed on a roll of 24" HP Pro Satin.

Now the problem is that as far as I can tell, when selecting print with no margins in the HP print dialogue, it says it will "slightly increase the print size", something I don't want to happen. We gang set up small sizes, say multiple 5 x 7's, 8 x 10's etc as one file (sheet) in CS2 to send to the driver so I want the printed version to be exactly the right size...not "slightly enlarged!"

So to summarise; I need to be able to print "real" exact sizes full bleed (no margins).
So if anyone has the answer, I would be most greatful!

Evo

Okay so no-one has tried to do a full bleed print at "exact size" !
Back to my own testing then...I'll try and post my results.

ps. glad to see others talking about ink drops..I posted pics of this problem months ago and have had it happen a few times now. I have had techs out by the way for the ink spot problems, the second tim e the head assemply way removed! But both time it seemed cleaning of the heads/ compartments & contacts was was required.

During my discussions with HP service, I directed them to the Z3100 Wiki pages, which they claimed they had not seen! I suggested that a premium product as the Z3100 44 & 24 inch should have a maintenace/cleaning kit included as it it is a common (now) problem and should even be sent to present owners as acknowledgement of the problem. He declined that, although he said he would pass the suggestion on. He then gave me the address for on-line ordering here in Australia of cleaning pads for print heads/contacts and also the correct oil for the occasional lubricating of the print head rail!... gee thanks!

Oh well, I tried!

Evo

I may be wrong, but I think you are misunderstanding something about "ganing" the setup of small sizes.

What you are actually doing is sending the printer one image to print. The printer doesn't know that there are areas on that one image that represent individual small images. If you want the printer to print full bleed, it will, but only to the edges of your ganged large file. If you want small images printed (full bleed or not), you will have to print them individually, and the Z3100 will not print smaller than A3.

The only solution I can envision is to make the original files the full paper size, "nest" them either the way you describe, or by using a RIP, or, the way I do my printing, which is using Qimage as a front end. With Qimage, I can drag images onto the page and arrange them manually or automatically to any configuration I want. In your case, I would have QImage lay them out on a regular grid, and use a good paper cutter to cut the images to their individual sizes. I can't think of any other way of doing this.

Have you considered Qimage?

This has been a sore point with me since I received my 24" Z3100. I have found that the only way to get full bleed borderless is to select the option in the driver for bordless printing / image enlargement "automatically by printer" which causes the driver to enlarge the print by a small percentage. I regularly print (or at least try to) two 9x12 images landscape onto 24" roll paper with a 24x10" page size. If I select "managed by application" which is what I would like to do using QImage's layout functions, then the two images are offset from one margin by about 1/4", with one image being correct size and the other being cut off by the 1/4" amount. The only way that I found to get the printer to print full bleed is as I said above, is to use the printer managed mode with the image expansion.

The other annoyance is that when I use any borderless mode (at least with satin papers) the printer prints the desired images, cuts them off the roll and then proceeds to cut off an additional 3" strip of paper after each print. When I contacted HP support about this, they acted like they never heard of this issue, and also stated that the 3" extra cutoff was the normal mode of operation. So I have found that it is just as easy for me to use a 24x12 inch paper size and print the two images portrait mode, without selecting borderless. When I do this, the printer does not cut off the extra 3" strip, and I end up with the two images printed at exactly 9x12 inches as printed from QImage without the stupid image expansion. In the end I use the same amount of paper and end up with the prints in the desired 9x12 size. When I raised a stink about the 1/4" border shift and the extra 3" cutoff, their solution was to send out a techie to pretty much replace all of the internal PC boards and hard drive on the printer, but to no avail.

Sometimes it just comes down to working around these kind of problems. I have pretty much lost faith that this issue will ever be corrected. I do have to state, however, that this is my only real issue with this printer. I so much more love this printer than my old epson 7600. This printer is much more economical for me in terms of ink used (no clogs in my very dry environment) that would result in me flushing about 40% of my ink down the drain trying to unclog my print heads.

hmmmm.... I've never tried to print two 9x12 images full bleed side by side on a 24" roll. I've always used a border (therefore not full bleed).

Annoying as it might be the printer seems to be behaving exactly according to the documentation.

Hmmmmm, I don't remember reading anything in the documentation that says it should arbitrarily cut off 3" extra for every print made on the printer. That works out to about 30% paper waste when printing 24x10 borderless ...

Thanks JP, you know what I'm taking about!

We always print our pre-ganged prints (yes making one large print) using the "add margins" setting in the HP driver and allow for that on the Z3100, meaning we have to trim off all edges once printed...which is becoming a bit of a pain. It does however mean we get "exact sizes" which as mentioned, is very important to us. Your, (2) 9 x 12" on a 24" roll is a good example where it would make a lot of sense to be able to print them ganged together and use the width of the paper (full bleed across ways anyway). The Z's problem of wasting another 3" is also not great!

So, yes maybe a 3rd party rip or Qimage (via pc mode on a Mac) may be an answer.

Thanks all for your comments!

Evo

Sorry.... I didn't mean to suggest that the extra 3" was documented, only that borderless behavior was.

Unfortunately this is the behavior irregardless of the application used to print with. I only use QImage for printing, but have also tried printing from lightroom and this is how it works.

I just can't figure out why it should not work, after all, what would be the point of offering the "managed by application" mode in the print driver. That tells me that the driver should offer the full 24" width in borderless mode to the application for printing; I certainly had no issue printing this way with my old 7600. As a matter of fact, when you select the "managed by application" borderless mode and also select print preview, the preview image shows the full bleed image exactly as I intend to print, yet when it comes out as an actual print, i get that 1/4" offset with a 1/4" white border, and one of the prints short by that same amount.

I was hoping that the recent firmware and driver upgrade would fix this problem, but I was disappointed. As I said before, HP has yet to acknowledge that this is even an issue, and they kinda imply that it is just my application that is printing incorrectly.

JP, when reading your problem I'm trying to understand if the printer is behaving as designed or if HP has a problem. This excerpt is from the "using your printer" doc.

Select margins options
By default, the printer leaves a 5 mm margin between the edges of your image and the edges of the
paper (17 mm at the foot of a sheet of paper). However, you can change this behavior in several ways.

● In the Windows driver dialog: select the Paper/Quality tab and then the Layout button.
● In the Mac OS Print dialog: select the Paper Type/Quality panel and then Layout.
You will then see at least some of the following options.
NOTE Under Mac OS, the available margins options depend on the paper size selected in the Page Setup dialog. For instance, for borderless printing you must select a paper size name that includes the words “no margins”.
● Standard. Your image will be printed on a page of the size you have selected, with a narrow margin between the edges of the image and the edges of the paper. The image should be small enough to fit between the margins.
● Oversize. Your image will be printed on a page slightly larger than the size you have selected. If you cut off the margins, you will be left with a page of the size you selected, with no margins remaining between your image and the edges of the paper.
● Clip Contents By Margins. Your image will be printed on a page of the size you have selected, with a narrow margin between the edges of the image and the edges of the paper. In this case, if the image is the same size as the page, the printer assumes that the extreme edges of the image are either white or unimportant, and do not need to be printed. This may be useful when your image already contains a border.
● Borderless. Your image will be printed on a page of the size you have selected, with no margins. The image is slightly enlarged to ensure that no margin is left between the edges of the image and the edges of the paper. If you select Automatically by Printer, this enlargement is done automatically. If you select Manually in Application, you must select a custom page size slightly larger than the page on which you intend to print. See also Print with no margins on page 49.

Print with no margins
Printing with no margins (to the edges of the paper) is known as borderless printing. This can be done only on rolls of glossy paper.

In order to be sure of leaving no margins, the printer prints slightly past the edges of the paper. Any ink deposited outside the paper is absorbed by the sponge situated in the platen.

NOTE If you wish to print with no margins, you must ensure that your image will fill the page. If your image is smaller than the page, it will not be automatically stretched.

You can request printing with no margins in the following ways:

● In the Windows driver dialog: select the Paper/Quality tab and press the Layout button. Then select Borderless.
● In the Mac OS Page Setup dialog: select a paper size name that includes the words “no margins”. Then, in the Print dialog, select Paper Type/Quality > Layout > borderless.

When you select Borderless, you must also select one of the following Image Enlargement options:

● Automatically by Printer means that the printer automatically enlarges your image slightly (normally by a few millimeters in each direction) in order to print over the edges of the paper.
● Manually in Application means that you must enlarge the image yourself in your application, and select a custom paper size that is slightly larger than the actual paper size.

NOTE If the first print job after loading paper is a borderless job, the printer may trim the leading edge of the paper before printing.

At the end of a borderless print, the printer normally cuts the print slightly inside the image area to ensure that the print is borderless. It then cuts the paper again so that no residual part of the image is included in the next print. However, if the job is cancelled, or if there is white space at the bottom of the image, only a single cut is made.

Hmmm. I am using satin paper and have printed borderless with the "auto expansion" mode with no problem. So does satin qualify as a subtype of glossy?

I use QImage, so I have always assumed that the HP would act like the old 7600, in that QImage prints to the fully 24" by xx" page size reported back to it from the print driver. I define a custom page size of 24x10", select that in QImage and place two 9x12 images landscape. If I define a page size even slightly larger than the actual paper width, then I get an error in the print driver indicating that the page size exceeds physical paper dimesions, or something along those lines.
I think the thing that is most bothersome, however is that the print preview (which, being naive, I would assume shows the image that will actually be printed ) shows the full bleed two up 9x12s as I would expect them to be printed.

Oh. I never saw that line in the documentation. So that would explain the extra 3" cut I suppose, although to me 3" seems excessively overkill; it would be nice if HP could adjust that down to an inch or so and accomplish the same purpose. Maybe if it is that small, the paper fragment would fall back into the printer path and gum things up. It would be nice, however, to have an option that would allow suppressing that extra end-of-page cutoff. If I was printing (vertically) longer page sizes, that wouldn't necessarily be as big of an issue, but in my case I lose 30% of the paper, so I have just fallen back to printing non-borderless on a 24x13 custom page size. In the end, I use the same amount of paper and get my two images printed at the exact size I need without all of the hassle.

BTW, I do appreciate your interest in helping to sort this out.

John

I believe so. Otherwise you wouldn't be presented with the options for borderless. Those options don't appear when I run matte paper.

Regards the printer chopping another 3 inches off each sheet. I had the same problem which just appeared and kept happening every time I printed. It disappeared when I had cause to reinstall the O.S and therefore the printer driver as well. Touch wood I have not had it since.

I've been printing on matte and paying closer attention than usual since this thread. I don't have the extra 3" to deal with. I do use the option to "Remove top/bottom blank areas".

I didn't think Z3100 was supported in QImage?

I'm not sure what you mean by "supported" but yes, QImage works nicely with the Z3100. Ernst has reported some issues but I think they're more related to the printer driver than QImage itself with the possible exception of maximum print length.