HP OfficeJet Pro K850 Skew problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charter
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Charter

I have had 2 of these printers (and am about to have a third). Both of them
have had a skew problem. By this I mean that in the landscape format the
right-hand margin is .25" and the left-hand is .75". The print preview
shows both margins as the same. HP tech support says they don't understand
and are sending me a 3rd printer under warranty. I don't think it will be
any better.

Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations for a different printer?
I need to print AutoCAD drawings in 11" x 17" and 13" x 19" formats.

Thanks,

Jeff
 
Charter said:
I have had 2 of these printers (and am about to have a third). Both of
them have had a skew problem. By this I mean that in the landscape format
the right-hand margin is .25" and the left-hand is .75". The print preview
shows both margins as the same. HP tech support says they don't understand
and are sending me a 3rd printer under warranty. I don't think it will be
any better.
Click to expand...

What you describe is a margins offset, not skew. (Skew would be if the
print were not parallel to the margins.) At any rate, these printers
generally have a larger margin on the bottom edge (left hand edge when
printing landscape) then the top (right) edge. I do not know about the
K850, but DeskJet printers typically have a top margin of 0.08", a bottom
margin of 0.46" and 0.25" on the sides. You may be able to get the desired
results by choosing an extra margin of 0.38" at the top (left).

The support folks should not have sent different printers, they were
probably confused by the skew statement.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c00455155&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en
discusses a problem with some version of the Apple driver that do not
properly show the margins in the print preview. I do not see a similar
document for Windows based systems, but you might make sure you have the
latest driver from
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c00455155&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en

Regards,
Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging

Regards,
Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging
 
Bob - Thanks very much for your reply.

The reason I called the problem "skew" is because that is how HP defines it.
( I would normally agree with your definition)
They have a setting in the printer toolbox called "test paper skew" that
allows you to print a test page. It prints small squares in the 4 corners
of the page. By folding the page you can easily determine if the squares
overlap.

The instructions that accompany the page tell you to fold it both
horizontally and vertically to be sure the appropriate squares overlap.

Having said that I think your analysis is correct. I'll try and change the
margins.

Jeff
 
The reason I called the problem "skew" is because that is how HP defines
it. ( I would normally agree with your definition)
They have a setting in the printer toolbox called "test paper skew" that
allows you to print a test page. It prints small squares in the 4 corners
of the page. By folding the page you can easily determine if the squares
overlap.

The instructions that accompany the page tell you to fold it both
horizontally and vertically to be sure the appropriate squares overlap.
Click to expand...

Hmm... it sounds like they had a bit of miscommunication between the
mechanism folks and those that wrote the test page :-). They used to use a
different test pattern for skew, one with a single line at the bottom and a
pair of parallel lines at the top. The paper was folded and the bottom line
needed to line up between the upper lines. If the print was tilted the
lines would be outside and they would fail for skew. They still do refer to
skew as a tilting of the print in
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c00491327&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en.

At any rate, I hope manually setting the margins cures your problem, because
the printer they are sending you will have the same margins.

Regards,
Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging
 
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