Printing to a UB-04 Form using Laserjet Enterprise 600 M602

[adelxt]

Hi,

I've been asked to fixed an issue of printing to a UB-04 Form correctly. Through my research many people have had issues on all types of lasers printing to this form. After a bit of searching I noticed a note about this issue from a website with some  parameters but am not sure where to change some of these parameters, and I'm not sure if this will work.

So has anyone figured out how to print correctly to this form? 

The first printout is very close but the top of the print just about touches the top line of the box. As you print out the 2nd anf 3rd sheet the print moves up but then stays there.

Below are the paramenters that I found and I saw a plase in the firmware under gerneral settings, administrative console, and then finally PCl where I could input some of these settings. When I tried by inputting different text lengths the firware took and accepted the inut but when printing the output was not affected. Forexample, I tried the number 50 , the number 70 but the length did not change.

Here's what I've found so far and it wasn't for a M602 but another laserjet:

oreientation: Portrait

Paper Size: Letter

CPI: 10.05

Left Margin: 0.20 inches (where do I adjust this?) 

LPI: 6.0 (where do I adjust this?)

Top Margin: 0.095 (where do I adjust this?)

Text Len: 64 lines

So what I'm looking for are:

1. the correct parameters
2. Where do I input them
3. Why didn't my test of different text lengths work

I know there will be some questions but I'm close but not there yet. 

Thanks

Steve

[dansdaduk]

The Form Length parameter you refer to is probably in the PCL sub-menu of the Print menu, which you can access via the front panel menus, or the Embedded Web Server equivalent.

The other parameters would be set using a combination of the source application and the printer driver (although selection of a different default font, font pitch, or font height via the menus may (not sure) affect the default line spacing.

But these default settings would only affect simple print jobs where only (LineFeed terminated) plain text (i.e. not containing any printer control sequences) is being sent to the device (e.g. from primitive DOS or *n*x regimes).

The (long - 3 pages) Logical Page vs Printable Area thread provides some more information on problems associated with some of these (or similar) forms.

[adelxt]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your input.

I read the link that you specified and although it explained the issues it was more due to width issues rather than length and it was dated in 2007 before edge to edge technology.

The laser printer that I'm working on has edge to edge technolgy so that seems to be okay. It's that the information doesn't line up in the verticle space. If I could push down the text maybe .05 or so (I'd have to play with it) I think I could get it to work. 

And as I mentioned earlier, the first page prints out acceptable (not perfect) but then the next two will shift the text up almost half a character and seems to stay there.

Here's the punch line, before the tech touched the front control panel, the text had lined up for a long time, so something happened when the tech was in the control panel and it must be possible to adjust this printer.

Your are correct that there are adjustments in the PCl submenu, but not all of them, especially top margin, which is what I would like to adjust if possible is there.

This UB-04 Form uses Adobe for printing and there are some settings within Adobe before printing but no one has touched these settings. I will check on that anyway just in case I'm not getting the whole picture.

There has to be an adjustment to push down the text and why is the first page good and the others move the text up?

BTW, I also tried thsi on a Laserjet 6000 M601and received the same results as stated above.

Thanks Steve

[dansdaduk]

>> ... before the tech touched the front control panel, the text had lined up for a long time, so something happened when the tech was in the control panel ...

The only setting which would appear to be relevant is the Text Length setting; changing this would effectively change the default line spacing value, and the default top margin setting is probably set to a (small) multiple of this lines-per-inch vertical spacing setting.

>> ... the first page prints out acceptable (not perfect) but then the next two will shift the text up almost half a character and seems to stay there ...

This seems to suggest that your application and/or printer driver is not sending full printer initialisation sequences at the start of the print job, so (at least for the first page marking primitives) the position is dependent upon the underlying printer front panel defaults.

It is never a good idea to rely on such defaults, unless the printer is only ever used to print one document format.

We could check which control commands are being sent to the printer by reprinting a (small (but at least two page), sanitised data) sample file, but selecting the 'print to file' option inthe Print dialogue (or equivalent), then analysing the resultant captured .prn file.

You can perform this analysis using the PRN File Analyse tool in the PCL Paraphernalia application, available via http://www.pclparaphernalia.eu

[lmacfarl]

Sadly the people that design the UB04 forms didnt take into consideration Laser printers, as a result you will not be able to effectively print this form with that laser (or most). You will NEED (need like no alternative) a laser printer that supports edge-to-edge technology. Another way of saying 'edge-to-edge' is a laser printer that will support 11x17 paper. The problem is the image drums in 99.9999999% of laser printer is 8" wide. The silly UB04 form is wider. Consequently you can't put ink out there. I printer that can print 11" wide can certainly cover the 8.5" of the form but those laser printer are significantly more money. The whole notion of printing these is not in anyones best interrest, but apparently a necessary evil. Grab your wallets.