Model 4250 laserjet - forms printing issue

[genelizbe]

when printing claim forms from the HP4250 LJ, users are noting that the farmost right characetr in the upper right corner is printing incompletely.

The form is a UB04 paper claim form and the form locator is 4 = type of bill. The last character prints incompletely and has to be hand written.

If a claim form is printed to view that character appears correctly.

Can alyone point me in the right direction? printer driver?

Thanks, gene

[John_Getzke]

> that the farmost right characetr in the upper right corner is printing incompletely.

Sounds like a margins issue.

Take a look at the print preview feature before sending a job to the printer.  Try to confirm if the character looks correct from the print preview or not.  Chances are the size of the document does not match the size of the paper loaded in the tray and the print driver is trying to adjust as best it can.

There should be an option from the print dialog box to change the margins from a static value to "Fit".  These steps will depend on your OS and printing application.  Look around your Print Dialog box for anything that offers the optinon to "Fit" or "Fit to page" and see if you cannot work around the problem.

Otherwise you will have to explore the settings of the document that you are trying to print and synch them up with the paper and tray settings on the printer.  Anythign other than a standard paper size such as 8.5x11 should be reviewed and considered for republishing with teh correct size.

[dansdaduk]

To add to the advice from @John_Getzke:

I remember a (very) long thread, on the old HP Business forums, regarding (attempting to) print UB92 and UB04 forms on LaserJet printers.

As I recall, the difficulty is that the UB04 form requires 82 characters per line, but (at the default 10 characters-per-inch fixed-pitch font spacing), this will not fit within the printable area of a Letter size page.

The only solutions were:

• To print at a slightly more condensed pitch - but this might not then match the boxes on preprinted stationery.
• To miss off characters (mostly insignificant?) at the left end of each line.
• To make use of the PCL DefineLogicalPage mechanism - not all printers support this, and it requires that the application generates the print stream directly (rather than via use of a printer driver) - not for the faint-hearted!

The original thread is long gone (the old forum printing discussion boards were archived, then deleted some time ago).

I have copies of the html of the thread, but it won't display unless I remove a lot of the original Lithium header lines, which I've done for part 1 of the thread (a long one - split into three).

So here (attached within a .zip file) is that doctored part 1 - it's not that readable, because of having had to remove so much, but it may provide some background. 

[genelizbe]

Hi,

Thank you for the reply.

Re. this printer model, is it possible to set it with an   Edge to Edge Override?

While the alignment is pretty good. It may be that the Edge to Edge setting is not on.

I know in the newer model M605 LJ it does have a setting to turn on Edge to Edge. I believe that is needed as part of the setup for printing claims. Unclear if that setting exists in the 4250 LJ?

Any feedback is appreciated,  Gene

[Jim_Asman]

Gene,

If you are in control of the pcl stream, get...

                                         http://www.spectracolorservices.com/hpforum/82across.pcl

Send this file directly to your 4250 and see if you get 82 characters across.

If it works for you, we can talk.

[dansdaduk · Accepted solution]

The User Guide manual for the Laserjet 4250/4350 models suggests that an "edge-to-edge over-ride" is available (via the Configuration menu settings):

 

But it doesn't explain just what this setting achieves.

According to the old PCL5 Technical Reference manual), for Portrait orientation on Letter size paper:

• The standard unprintable margins are 50 dots (at 300 dots-per-inch) = 1/6 inch.
• The standard PCL logical page offset from the edge of the physical sheet is 75 dots = 1/4 inch.

In my experience, the 'edge-to-edge' settings on such devices reduce the unprintable margins from 1/6 inch (just over 4mm) to about 2mm (about 1/12 inch), although what the effect is on the (PCL) logical page margins,  I'm not really sure.

... and print quality may suffer if these margins are reduced.

@Jim_Asman's sample file makes use of a technique which is a subset of the DefineLogicalPage mechanism I referred to in my previous post; crucially, as he states, this is only viable "... if you are in control of the pcl stream ..." (i.e. your application is writing the print controls directly, rather than via use of a standard printer driver).

[dansdaduk]

... and regarding that old Business forums thread I mentioned in a previous post:

It does display OK (albeit splt into three parts, to mimic the original 3 pages) if opened, on my system, using the Chrome browser, but not  using Edge, although references to file attachments (containing sample PCL, etc.) cannot be followed.

My contributions to the thread are under username "ChrisH".

The attached .zip file contains the three main html files, and three folders holdling the corresponding support files, if  you want to peruse the lengthy saga.

[genelizbe]

Thanks tpo all.

Genelizbe

[Jim_Asman]

@dansdaduk

If you set the overide to ON, I wonder how that would affect existing forms that were defined with it OFF. Perhaps it could be done with a PJL command just for the particular form.

[dansdaduk]

>> ... If you set the overide to ON, I wonder how that would affect existing forms that were defined with it OFF ...

Good point, Jim.

Even with only one form (this ghastly sounding UB04), it may be necessary to use the X- and Y-registration features usually available on business-class laser printers (such as the LJ 4200/4250, etc.).

With several different pre-printed forms, it may be necessary to adjust registration each time the form-type is changed (reminds me of the old days of setting head of form, and moving the tractor-feed units along a track, on line/chain printers, back in the 1970s).