Printing 8.5x4 check

[Uranium-235]

i have a customer who prints checks that come in 8.5x11, three checks to a page. If he has one check left over, it's basically impossible to get more printers to print just that check. With the perforation in place, it's 8.5x4. Also mention this is from Quickbooks Desktop. He's doing this because these business checks are not cheap

He has two HP Printers right now, an 8600 and 87xx. These will successfully feed and print from a single check. But they're getting old and problematic. Last time he got a new printer, he had to test them for this ability, and if it didn't work, send them back. Took four printers but he found these worked. Which I cannot find anymore because it's of course, very discontinued. No new ones without a scalpers price.

A few days ago, I printed his single check document to Microsoft PDF, and he cut me a bunch of 8.5x4 blank papers after I told him I had an idea I had. I literally went to Staples with my laptop on their wifi (for win10 auto driver download...which didn't work on all of them but all the HP's) and hooked up a bunch of printers with the blank check inserts, fitting them on top of the regular blank pages on the loader. Most of them did bleep to put a right length paper in. Eventually a store manager came over concerned what I was doing and he understood and helped, even after I jammed a canon laser

Closest I came was a laser color HP with a single feed slot for tray 1. Just put the paper into the slot and it rolls it into the printer. It did seem to work but put out some other error after that. I'm guessing this is an envelope slot

If anyone has any suggestions for a new printer, or another way to go about this, that would be great

He requires a fax too but there are ways around that (Windows scan/fax manager with a fax/model USB dongle) and auto network print. Probably hosted on the quickbooks server

HAS to be color, ink or laser, does not matter. Price matters to a point. If he's going to get a laser color for $400, he's willing to do that, but it must actually, you know, work

TIA

[Repairatrooper · Accepted solution]

What he will likely need to do to make this work is to make use of the preset paper sizes you can setup in the HP driver. Set one for the page size of 2 checks and one for the page size of 1 check and he will have to select that preset when he goes to print. Setting the manual feed tray to any size should provide proper operation as long as the preset specifies tray 1 as the paper source.

[Uranium-235]

this will probably the one I'm going to suggest. Do you know if generic toner works for it?

https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-color-laserjet-pro-m283fdw

glad it has a fax, one of the requirements for him, though I can setup a windows fax and scan, That will be an extra pain