Printing Descendent Chart - Borderless on Epson R1800

[terrywhite]

I've been a Reunion user for many years and the program rocks!

Each year I print a very large descendent chart (32 FEET LONG) and post it in our banquet room for our annual family reunion. However, ever since going to Mac OS X and Reunion I've never been able to get it to print with out a 1/2 inch gap between each 19"x13" page.

So this year I decided to upgrade from my Epson Stylus Photo 1270 to an Epson Stylus Photo R1800 which can do "Borderless 13X19 Banners" (thinking that the problem was in my old Epson and the driver that would never see another update). Much to my dismay I was still getting a 1/2" gap between each page. I tried every setting in the Epson driver that I could think of. I then called Epson tech support and they had me try a variety of things too. They asked me did the program I was printing from have a true ZERO margin to which I replied "YES" because I wasn't seeing any gaps on screen. The page breaks showed, but they showed each page butted up against the next page with no gaps. They told me that they would have to call me back the next day after doing some testing. In the meantime I decided that "this should work!" and I was determined to make it work that night. All along I thought the problem was on Epson's end and rather than waste more expensive paper I decided to try different settings and just preview the results to screen and each setting rendered the 1/2 inch gap between the pages. Then it hit me that maybe it's the Epson driver causing the problem so I decided to use the full version of Acrobat 7 Professional and generate a PDF using the Acrobat driver. I created a custom page 13x19" and choose it in the page set up (wide) and created a PDF and when I opened the PDF in Acrobat much to my dismay the 1/2" gap was there. At this point I knew that it had nothing to do with Epson and was in fact a Reunion problem. I also noticed something odd. The gap was only occurring on the the right side of the page and not the left, top or bottom.

My work around for now:

I created a custom page size of 13"x19.5" to accommodate for the extra gap. I then created a PDF using Acrobat and opened the PDF up in Acrobat 7 Pro and cropped all the pages by 1/2" on the right size. This gave me a true 19"x13" document that I then printed to the Epson with the borderless setting and it worked fine.

[theKiwi]

On my Epson 1270 when I printed a multilongpage document I got it to stop after each page, and I simply would the paper back into the printer by the required amount. Since the page breaks are always (if you tell them to be) clear of all boxes, it's only the line that go across the pages, and so if there's a very small overprint when the next page starts it doesn't really matter.

The note I wrote in my Epson 1270 book said to roll it back 11 mm - that's about 7/16 inch.

Roger

[ttl]

First of all, I think you have a very serious printer problem and you should buy a new printer and send the first R1800 to me. :D

Regarding the display of page breaks in the chart editor, it's hard to draw any conclusions about margins because the pages are displayed in a "Tile Imageable Areas" mode like one of the options in Illustrator. I don't know if you've tried printing letter sized pages from a printer with fixed minimum margins, but you'll get white space around all the edges of every page.

It occurred to me that if you're having to print multiple 19" pages, it might be nice in an accidental sort of way to have .5" overlap on pages you're trying to connect. Also, is the R1800 really restricted to a 19" page length? With the roll feed it says it can go up to 44", which would cut down on the number of splices you'd have to do.

[terrywhite]

It occurred to me that if you're having to print multiple 19" pages, it might be nice in an accidental sort of way to have .5" overlap on pages you're trying to connect. Also, is the R1800 really restricted to a 19" page length? With the roll feed it says it can go up to 44", which would cut down on the number of splices you'd have to do.

Yes, I can do 13x44" pages, but the problem with that is if the last page is a partial page, then it would potentially push too much paper through at the end.

[ttl]

For the occasional times I have to do multiple pages for a chart, I'll determine the actual size of the tree, add a few inches, and then divide by the number of pages I think is right, and that will give me the proper page size to define.

For instance, if your tree is 32 feet long, I'd add 6" to get a total length of 390". Divided by 10 pages would result in 39" pages; divided by 9 pages would result in 43.3" pages. Moving boxes off page breaks might require an iteration or two.

I don't know if there's other factors you're dealing with, but it's something to consider.

[theKiwi]

And just to clarify what I wrote, and I think Terry is talking about, but which maybe Tim didn't understand was the with the roll paper option, you just keep on printing on the roll so that all "pages" are on a single sheet which you cut off at the end of the process.

That's why I roll the paper back 11 mm after each page, then tell it to print the next page - if the paper hasn't moved sideways at all (very unlikely sinced you're just turning the big gear to roll the paper backwards), then the next page starts printing its lines right on top of the lines you've "just" rolled back into the printer. The end result is as near to seamless as it can be.

And for Terry, after it's printed the last page, even if it's a short page, just cut it off near the edge of the chart and roll the rest back into the printer - or can't the R1800 do that?

Roger

[ttl]

And just to clarify what I wrote, and I think Terry is talking about, but which maybe Tim didn't understand was the with the roll paper option, you just keep on printing on the roll so that all "pages" are on a single sheet which you cut off at the end of the process.
That's exactly what I missed!

[terrywhite]

Yes, the R1800 can roll the paper back and also thanks for the suggestion on creating just the right amount of custom pages. I will use those techniques going forward. However, I'm not willing to stop after every page and roll back 11mm. I'll continue to use my PDF cropping work around until this issue is resolved.

Thanks again!

[ttl]

I guess this means I don't get the printer. :rolleyes:

[terrywhite]

I guess this means I don't get the printer. :rolleyes:

You'll have to try harder than that :)