ssolberg
VIP Member
We have quite a few various printers throughout our organization but we have recently ran into some issues that have me stumped. I recently finished converting all our forms from 3x to 7x/CTIS and we have been live for awhile now. This issue I'm about to discuss never occurred with any of the 3x forms.
After converting to 7x, we found that some various E1 jobs that print to some of our printers were not complete. We would find that the jobs would randomly hang up at the PRINTER (no error from CF side of things, everything is sent to the printer just fine) and no reportable error at the printer either other than the printer would have an incoming CF job stuck in a "Rendering" status (in the printer job queue) while all other jobs get stuck behind it. Only way to clear it was to shut the printer off and have it clear everything. I would send through the exact same E1 job and it would print fine. Other times it would stop at another random place.
This issue is not just occurring with one particular CF form, it is happening on various forms and I don't suspect the forms at all. What I suspect is more related to "volume" of incoming jobs to the printer. For example. I have an E1 job that generates 1 "big" PDF and as it goes through Director, the set is defined to break that up so it generates maybe 250 individual jobs as it heads to the printer. (there is a reason for this, the director project has other rules it has to adhere to as well). Each PDF headed to the printer is quite small (1-2 pages at most). Another example is an E1 job that when run, generates 50 individual jobs, each of which heads to Director for processing. In both cases, it regularly hangs things up at the printer.
From the CF printer definition side of things, it is setup as Generic/Text and using Postscript, just like all my other printers. I've tried using PCL and a print driver and that actually made things worse! I've tried other things, none of which have made things any better.
All the printers that have this issue are Sharp MX-41xx or MX-50xx model printer/copiers. We have had techs out looking at them and swapping out memory (etc...) and having no luck. And in the back of my mind, though, this only started happening after the 7x upgrade.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what else to try or troubleshoot? The Sharp tech guys say that they only time they have seen similar issues is if somehow the incoming job is corrupted or "invalid" but of course my response was always "then why is it fine the next time I send the exact same job through?" So we are at an impasse.
After converting to 7x, we found that some various E1 jobs that print to some of our printers were not complete. We would find that the jobs would randomly hang up at the PRINTER (no error from CF side of things, everything is sent to the printer just fine) and no reportable error at the printer either other than the printer would have an incoming CF job stuck in a "Rendering" status (in the printer job queue) while all other jobs get stuck behind it. Only way to clear it was to shut the printer off and have it clear everything. I would send through the exact same E1 job and it would print fine. Other times it would stop at another random place.
This issue is not just occurring with one particular CF form, it is happening on various forms and I don't suspect the forms at all. What I suspect is more related to "volume" of incoming jobs to the printer. For example. I have an E1 job that generates 1 "big" PDF and as it goes through Director, the set is defined to break that up so it generates maybe 250 individual jobs as it heads to the printer. (there is a reason for this, the director project has other rules it has to adhere to as well). Each PDF headed to the printer is quite small (1-2 pages at most). Another example is an E1 job that when run, generates 50 individual jobs, each of which heads to Director for processing. In both cases, it regularly hangs things up at the printer.
From the CF printer definition side of things, it is setup as Generic/Text and using Postscript, just like all my other printers. I've tried using PCL and a print driver and that actually made things worse! I've tried other things, none of which have made things any better.
All the printers that have this issue are Sharp MX-41xx or MX-50xx model printer/copiers. We have had techs out looking at them and swapping out memory (etc...) and having no luck. And in the back of my mind, though, this only started happening after the 7x upgrade.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what else to try or troubleshoot? The Sharp tech guys say that they only time they have seen similar issues is if somehow the incoming job is corrupted or "invalid" but of course my response was always "then why is it fine the next time I send the exact same job through?" So we are at an impasse.