11x17 Printing alignment is off-center

[PoleDesigner]

Our office recently purchased and installed a new printer and the 11x17 prints appear to be off-center to the left slightly. I can't find any information regarding the alignment in the printer options or in the user manual. 

Any advice?

[dansdaduk]

Most business-class LaserJet printers provide X- and Y-registration adjustment settings, via one of the front panel menus.

There are usually different settings available for each paper tray.

I assume that this will apply to your model.

Of course, it could perhaps be that your applications(s) are setting inappropriate margins?

[PoleDesigner]

I can't find any x- and y- registration settings within the front panel for the printer. 

AutoCAD is the main program we use for our 11x17 size prints. I fiddled around with the x- and y- settings within there and if I shift the y- to accommodate for the printed offset than it just pushes the drawing off the printed area on the page (as in that side of the drawing doesn't print). Same goes for printing 11x17 drawings out of Adobe, if we shift the in-program settings than the drawing doesn't print along the one side.  

I can print the "Current Settings Page" from the printer's front panel, and it shows x1-, y1-, x2-, and y2- shifts. Those values are currently set to 0 for all three trays. 

[dansdaduk]

The x- and y-shift settings are what needs to be changed.

I think that the 1 and 2 suffixes represent front and rear face respectively.

I don't know off-hand which menu provides these items on your printer model.

I'll look to see what the menu structure is on my printer models - tomorrow (it's now 21:20 in the UK).

[PoleDesigner]

I Googled x- y- shifts for the printer and came across the Troubleshooting Manual for the M712 printer. It gave me the necessary menu structure to get to the shift settings.

Administration --> General Settings --> Print Quality --> Image Registration --> Adjust Tray

Getting there allowed me to adjust each of the x and y values (1 denotes the front side and 2 denotes the back side, plus and minus for up/down right/left).

Not sure why I needed to apply a -3.00 mm x1- shift to the factory settings to get our drawings to be centered, but it was able to fix the problem at the moment.

Thanks for talking this out with me.  

[dansdaduk]

>> ... it was able to fix the problem at the moment ...

 Glad to hear it.

>> ... Not sure why I needed to apply a -3.00 mm x1- shift to the factory settings to get our drawings to be centered ...

I can't offer a reason for this, just a few observations:

• With older generations of printers (e.g. LaserJet 4), I think that registration tolerances were given as something like ±2.5 mm; I assume that newer devices have perhaps improved upon this somewhat.
• Given that the device is electromechanical, slight variations in the paper transport mechanism may give rise to registration issues.
• This is presumably why business-class laser printers tend to provide a registration adjustment mechanism.
• There may be slight differences, depending on which Page Description Language is in use:
• With PCL6 (PCL XL), all points are addressable, but images are still clipped by the boundaries of the 'unprintable area' margins (usually about 4 mm all round, but can be reduced (on some models) to about 2 mm by use of 'wide A4'or 'edge-to-edge' options).
• The same is true with PCL5, except that this PDL has the concept of a 'logical page' which means that the minimum margins are usually about 6 mm.
• I don't know the position with PostScript - but images will still be clipped by the 'unprintable area' restrictions.
• You can check the printable areas available with a number of different standard page sizes (including Ledger), using PCL5 or PCL XL, via use of the Print Area tool in the PCL Paraphernalia application, available via http://www.pclparaphernalia.eu - here is a scan of a sample page (for A4 Portrait using PCL5).