Print length limit?

[imgooch]

Hi

I have a HP Designjet 800 42". It's rather old but has been reliable. However, I've never been able to print long documents on it. I'd like to print out banners or well anything long but there seems to be some limit at 48".

For example, I have a document (just a text banner) that is 24" wide and 240" long. When it's sent to the printer it says there will be some clipping but gives no details. When I proceed it prints but stops at 48" then continues to spew out the other 16 feet of paper with nothing on it. After that it will print the next 48" and repeat.

I've come across this strange limit of 48" elsewhere in assorted programs as well. Wherein when trying to create a document longer than that it would say the value has to be less than 48". However, in this case, Photoshop let me create the document, the printer driver let me make the page size as 240", but it just won't print it so.

Any ideas on how I could fix this? How do people print banners? I would think that if I have a roll of paper that the length of the print should really be infinite.

In case it matters, I'm on win7, but I had the same problem on xp and win2k. The printer is on the latest available firmware and I have the latest drivers.

A search on the web has led me nowhere. It seems as if I am the only person that has ever had this problem and I have to say that's a first!

Thanks for any insight.

 

[hang-the-9]

According to HP, that printer has a 150 foot print limit http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06b/18972-18972-3328061-12600-3328078-25302-377958-21000.html

So odd that you have a 4 ft limit seemingly.

Try this. Add more RAM to the printer (should be able to find out what type it takes easily, it's will probably be old EDO RAM, but may need a custom size), and also try using a PostScript driver instead of a PCL driver, or vice versa if you are already using a PS driver.

HP Designjet Memory Modules

check price with retailer HP Designjet SIMM 128 MB (C2388A)

check price with retailer HP Designjet SIMM 64 MB (C2387A)

 

[imgooch]

I had already added more RAM a few years ago. I checked and it has 96MB in it. I'm not sure what it's limit may be.

I really doubt it's the memory as I've done some very large files before and while they didn't necessarily load fast, they printed out fine. This doc is only 3 words of text, nothing more. And it cuts off at exactly 48"...which used to be some sort of windows print limit some years ago. Is this logical?

The only driver there is for win7 says HP-GL/2. I don't know what PCL and PS are. However, there is a version of this printer, the 800ps, which I don't have, that apparently uses those PS drivers in winXP....not that I even know what that means.

Oh, that link is for the ps version....I have the non-ps.

now that I look at the specs of this machine it looks as though I must be mistaken about adding more RAM before. But I swear I did! Well it says 96MB is standard with 160MB max.

thoughts?

 

[hang-the-9]

Check with HP, I have not uses one of those printers in about 8 or 9 years, but when I did have one at a company I was at, they all printed out 5-6 feet long items with no issues.

 

[imgooch]

It's not a "currently supported model"

Well I got it working anyway. I changed a setting on the machine in the paper section>paper size to be "inked area". Also, I made the document into a pdf first then printed from acrobat. One of those two things worked as it finally printed the whole thing. It still spit out extra paper but at least it printed correctly for once.