forum.datacad.com

Good afternoon,
I've spent a good part of the morning trying to get a plot from our hpdesign jet330. The plot starts alright but about 1/2 way through, the output is totally black covering the entire sheet.
I've tried restarting, different drawings, nothing seems to help. yesterday things worked fine, no changes from then. Any clues?

Stephen

Hello Stephen,

This happens in all drawings, independently of size or complexity ?

Did you tried a same drawing as those which was printed yesterday ?

Have a way to check plotter memory, if it remains fully available as usual ?

Did you tried to create a .PDF file and print it, to see if is there any difference for direct plotting ?

Have you restarted from 'zero' (push button) ?

Thanks,
Miguel

Good morning Miguel,
Thanks for responding.
It appears to be in all drawings, this seems to be somewhat related to a fairly heavy use of xrefs in these dwgs.
I did try the drawings that I could print the previous day, no luck.
I don't know how to check the plotter memory. My plotter is set up to use the computer's memory. This has worked great in the past.
I think I may have read one onf you previous posts concerning the use of a pdf and was going to try it. Before I did that, I tried check plots. First to an 8.5X11 on a different printer. That worked fine. Then I tried a check plot to an11X17 on the larger plotter-the problem plotter. That worked fine as well. I was able to plot all the drawings as check plots, there wa one instance of the big black out, but somehow it recovered in a subsequent replot o that drawing.
I then tried a check plot on a 24X36 sheet. This worked as well! Finally, I tried to plot in a normal fashion, and was successful in printing a sheet that I couldn't plot earlier.
I did try to reboot-several times prior to all of this, it did not seem to make a difference.
I have tried to plot scanned photos from corel draw at a very large size, and the results were similar to yesterday's problems. I'm thinking it does have something to do with the ability to use the memory properly.
We'll see how things go today.
Thanks again for the response.
Stephen

You may try using a different driver, many of the HP drivers will work for other models, i.e. try using the driver for an HP220, its worth a shot.

Hi Steve:

I had this happen a while back, and the answer I got from Bill D'Amico was to replace the parallel cable -- it has "gone bad".

If it is not connected with a parallel cable, then...we'll have to think some more...

thanks for the replys everyone. I'm in the midst of a deadline so I haven't been able to see if the problem is still there. I'll keep you posted.
Neil, I thought Bill's answer was pretty interesting, a cable gonebad! Just wondering, how does that happen? Stationary, hidden, never disturbed. Maybe mice, eh?
Speaking of mice...my old (faithful) logitech trackball is acting up. It works fine when I boot up, after about 30 minutes of use, the curser freezes up. No way to get the mouse to work besides rebooting. My wacom tablet still functions, as well as the mouse that came with it. Could it be the mouse is tired, or gone bad as well. Obviously hanging around the plotter too much.

Stephen

Hi Stephen,

On your mouse, have you cleaned it lately? Is it optical, or mechanical? Also, you might check the driver version, and try the latest one.

As for the cable: oxidization in the copper wires, contacts, and/or the shielding. This has a greater affect on longer lengths...

Good morning Neil,

Yep it's pretty clean. It is mechanical. I lloked on logitech site and, because this mouse is soo old, they don't support it formally. They said something to the effect that no button adjusments could be made from the control panel+/-. It's probably time for a new mouse anway. Actually, I've been looking and haven't found one that feels as comfy as the one I have. Old habits...does this qualify as an old draftsman thing? You know you're old when you can't get use to a new mouse.
As far as th cable getting old, i can buy the oxidation therory, this is a 'long' cable.

Thanks, Neil

Stephen

A long time ago we used to have problems with long parallel cables. Their length is often limited for that reason. If you have developed any difference in resistance between the different pins or lines then it could affect the timing of the signal delivery and cause the data to arrive out of sync causing the printer/plotter to choke.