holtz%cascade.carleton.cdn%ubc.CSNET@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA (Neal Holtz) (11/30/85)
We are printing a bit over 4000 pages per month on a LaserWriter, almost all of it TeX documents -- almost all of those having 35mm margins on left and 25mm margins on other three sides. Periodically when we print something that goes outside those margins, there is a very noticeable decrease in text ``darkness'' where ever the text strays outside the normal margins. Presumably, the central part of the drum that sees more use gets slightly different characteristics with age. In fact I notice that documents printed later in a cartridges life are considerabley darker than those printed early, so that we usually end up turning the print density down as we go along. I guess a ``fix'' for the varying density would be to periodically print some pages with dark borders in the region where the margins normally are, but this looks like it might require a bit of experimentation (i.e., how often is it necessary -- how many pages are required to make the differences less noticeable, etc.) Has anyone else experienced the problem? Have you found a reasonable solution?
laser-lovers@ucbvax.UUCP (12/03/85)
We've never seen dim edges except as an early sign of the cartridge giving
out on our LaserJets, and most of our stuff has substantial and fairly
consistent margins. Hm, except for our header pages, which do print a
noticeable amount of black across the full width -- maybe that does it.
(We use the checkerboard pattern of the DEL character in the LaserJet's
built-in font for header banners, and it gives us another useful bonus in
that they usually show cartridge-is-dying fading before text pages do.)
There does seem to be a "breaking in" phenomenon in which cartridges give
relatively light print for the first few hundred pages. We observe this
quite consistently. We've never bothered with the print-density adjustment,
which in our experience has such negligible effects that it's not worth
the effort.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry