What happened when a segment of a poster is missing (i.e. not printed on the poster) after printing?
Sometimes if a PDF file is generated with PowerPoint on PC, and you use Preview on Mac to print, some text boxes on the PDF file may not print. Some label text boxes may appear while they don't exist in the original PDF. In this situation, use Adobe Acrobat, the file should print out fine then.What if the poster PDF is printing grayscale instead of color when sending the print job from Acrobat?
On the Print screen, go to Advanced next to Printer, then make sure Composite is selected under Color in the Output panel, not Composite Gray.
You will need to manually delete all printed files to clear plotter's memory in order for the plotter to process current print job. To do so, go to menu, use up and down arrow to navigate to Job Management Menu > Job Queue, select files, press OK, and delete.
The streak problem happened before particularly on canvas. According to Library IT staff, it is due to the humidity. The ink would not get absorbed quickly on canvas due to humid weather (since the plotter is very close to the emergency door, so it is more sensitive to the humidity level). Therefore, we either ask patron to switch to semi-glossy paper, or have patron give it a try at Earth Science where the canvas printing is also available if patron insists on using canvas. This is exactly what happened to me yesterday morning. Patron’s printout on canvas had noticeable streaks, so we ended up printing on semi-glossy, and the poster turned out to be great.
It is hard to judge when the streaks would happen to what file. However, if it is humid outside, and patron wouldn’t mind switching to semi-glossy, we would encourage patron to print on semi-glossy. If patron insists on canvas, then give it a try and have patron monitor the printing process closely, as soon as the streaks is found, cancel the print job.
Check the last settings you used for the poster that is having the problem. The plotter tells you the last settings that were used and why you are having print quality issues. Like the screenshot below. It is recommended to use the best print quality to avoid banding, graininess and color inaccuracy.
When a new roll of semi-glossy paper is being loaded, the plotter would ask for paper information, such as paper type and length. The new roll is 100 feet long, as long as we input this information correctly the first time you load the new roll, then plotter should be able to keep track of how much has been used, thus would print available length on the paper each time the roll is being unloaded. If there is not enough paper left, the plotter would let you know and would not print the current job until you load enough paper.
However, if no paper length information is found whatsoever, the plotter would keep plotting until the paper runs out. This is frustrating and wastes our ink. To avoid this problem: 1) try to input the paper length info correctly every time you load the new roll ; 2) if this info is unavailable for the current roll, then use your own judgement and see if there is enough paper on current roll for heavy continuous plotting job, if not, load a new roll. Ink costs more than paper, so better to discard the paper than waste the ink in this case.
Since the plotter cannot cut the canvas, thus it cannot print paper information on the canvas like the barcode on semi-glossy paper, therefore, there is no way to determine the paper length left on the current roll. Please use your own judgement to see whether the roll has enough paper for upcoming plotting job.