Printing to multiple trays at once HP Laserjet P3015

[scbauml]

We was using our Networked Laserjet P3015 to print invoices, picking slips, etc...

This print has trays 1-4 and 1 being white, 2 yellow, 3 Pink and 4 Gold.

When we print through our accounting software it would print 4 copies, 1 on each sheet.

Over the past month though that had stopped working. Now they have to individually load each color into tray 1.

I was not the one to originally set this up so my question is:

How do you set up the printer to print 4 copies, 1 from each tray everytime?

[dansdaduk]

>> ... How do you set up the printer to print 4 copies, 1 from each tray everytime? ...

You can't; the printer justs obeys the print instructions sent to it by the application / printer driver.

Your accounting software package, probably (but not necessarily) in conjunction with a standard printer driver, will have generated a print job, or jobs, containing the invoice data and printer commands to select the required media (paper) source for each 'copy'.

I assume that the application prints uncollated sets (i.e. all the white copies first, then all the yellow copies, etc.), rather than printing collated sets (page 1 white, page 1 yellow, page 1 pink, page 1 gold, page 2 white, etc.).

We'd need to know rather more about your application, in order to understand what it (used to) do, and how it might have done it.

[scbauml]

It does collate the printing. It prints all 4 and then moves on to the next job.

That's about all i know.

Of course you might be right that it was all done in the accounting software but i'm hoping someone might have an idea

Thanks,

[dansdaduk]

>> ... It does collate the printing. It prints all 4 and then moves on to the next job ...

If a print job consists of only one invoice page, then you can't tell (from the output) whether 'copies' were collated or not collated:

• Collated:      page 1 white; page 1 yellow; page 1 pink; page 1 gold.
• Uncollated: page 1 white; page 1 yellow; page 1 pink; page 1 gold.

It is only when an individual print job (or unit, or whatever your application might refer to it as) contains more than one page for an invoice, or more than one invoice, that you'd see any difference.

>> ... i'm hoping someone might have an idea ...

I can assure you that there is nothing you can set on the printer which would  cause it to print four separate copies of the data in a received single page print job from four different paper trays.

The 'instructions' must be in the print job(s), where one of the following is likely to be the case:

• A single print job is generated which contains multiple copies of the data for each invoice page, each copy preceded by an appropriate sequence of 'set paper source' instructions to select the required tray . The job may contain just one 'set' of four copies, or could contain a series of (collated) sets.
• Four separate print jobs are generated, where each job contains the data for a single copy of a single invoice, preceded by an appropriate sequence of 'set paper source' instructions to select the required tray.

Note that printing successive pages from different paper sources can degrade throughput (i.e. overall print speed) on some devices.

If you could 'capture' the output (using sample 'sanitised' data) of your application to a print file, I could analyse the resultant .prn file, and work out which method is being employed.

I've no idea if your application supports such capture; for standard applications and printer drivers, use the 'print to file' option in the Print dialogue).

[juFo]

You can do this with a commercial software called Print&Share.

Have a look at www.printandshare.info

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iXuU4b5mh4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf5sndsWr6I

etc...