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HP Designjet 800 Series Printers - Queueing and Nesting

Canceling a page that is being printed
Canceling the drying time for a printed page
Managing pages that have not yet been printed
Deleting a job from the queue
Making copies of a job in the queue
Avoiding paper waste by nesting pages
Turning nesting On and Off
Which pages cannot be rotated?

Canceling a page that is being printed

Press CANCEL on the front panel.
  • The printer advances and cuts the paper as though the print were finished.
  • A multi-page job or a big file may take longer to stop printing than single print files.

Canceling the drying time for a printed page

note:
Use caution when performing this procedure as an image that has had insufficient time to dry could get damaged.
  1. Press FORM FEED AND CUT on the front panel.
  2. The printer will release the paper and it will fall into the paper bin.

Managing pages that have not yet been printed

Queuing and nesting is only available on the HP Designjet 800 series. (On the 500 series, only a reprint option is available with an HP_GL/2 Accessoiry card installed).
  • Change the Queuing setting by selecting Queue On or Off from the Job Management menu.
  • To change the nesting setting, click here to see “Turning nesting On and Off”.
  • If the printer is turned off with unprinted files in the queue, the files are lost and must be re-sent.

With Queuing turned ON

  • When queuing is on and the printer receives print files, and the files are stored in the queue in the order they are received. if nesting is off, the files are printed as soon as possible, in the order they are received. If nesting is on, files are printed when the time-out period expires or there are enough files to fill a page width. You can reprint files that have already been printed. (Click here to see “Avoiding paper waste by nesting pages”.)
  • You can send pages to the printer without waiting for the current page to finish printing.
  • Pages are stored in the queue in the order they are received.
  • You can manipulate the pages in the queue, for example, prioritizing them and reprinting them.
  • You can use nesting, the printer’s paper-saving feature.
  • While one page is printing, the printer will accept and start processing the next file.

With Queuing turned OFF

If queuing is off and the printer receives files, they are printed as they are received, and are not stored in the queue. Nesting settings have no effect.
  • Files are printed as they are received, and are not stored in the queue.
  • The printer will not accept another file sent from the computer until the current page has finished printing and the printer is ready.
  • You cannot use nesting.
  • If you turn Queuing off while pages are still in the queue, they will be printed and nested (if nesting is on), until the queue is empty.

Position in queue

The job currently being printed is in position 0. The next job to be printed is in position 1, the one after in position 2, and so on. The previous job printed is in position –1, the one before that in position –2, and so on.

Deleting a job from the queue

  • Under normal circumstances, there is no need to delete a job from the queue after printing it, as it will just “fall off the end” of the queue as more files are sent. However, if you have sent a file in error and want to avoid any chance of it being reprinted, you can delete it by selecting it and choosing cancel.
  • To remove a job that has not yet been printed, simply identify it by its position in the queue (click here to see “Position in Queue”) and delete it by choosing the job, choosing cancel and pressing ENTER.
  • If the job is currently being printed (its queue position is 0), and you want both to cancel the job and to delete it from the queue, first press the cancel key and then cancel it from the queue.

Making copies of a job in the queue

note:
In all cases, the job must still be in the queue.
Has the job already been printed?
What to do
Copies and reprints
Yes
Use Reprints (see right)
Having selected the job and chosen Copies or Reprints (from the Job Management menu), use the scrolling keys to specify the number of copies required, and press Enter. The number you enter is the actual number of pages to be printed; for example, choosing 2 for a page not yet printed means you will get the one original and one additional; choosing 2 for a page already printed once will result in a total of three (the original one and two more). The maximum number you can specify is 99.
The setting you specify in this option overrides any value set by your software.
If Rotate was on when you sent the file, every copy will be rotated also.
No
Use Copies (see right)

Avoiding paper waste by nesting pages

  • Nesting can only be used with roll paper.
  • Nesting means placing pages side-by-side on the paper (rather than one after the other), to avoid wasting paper.

The printer tries to nest pages when:

  • The printer is loaded with roll paper rather than sheet paper; and
  • In the front-panel menus, Queue is On (the default). (Click here to see “Managing pages that have not yet been printed”); and
  • In the front-panel menus, Nest is On (that is, set to a value from 1 to 99 minutes). (Click here) to see “Turning nesting On and Off”.

To be in the same nest, pages must satisfy all the following conditions:

  • All must be Color or all Grayscale. Grayscale may include a color page rendered in grayscale.
  • All must be at the same dots-per-inch setting.
  • All have the same print quality setting (Best, Normal, and Draft).
  • All have the same Margin sizes.
  • All must be HP-GL/ 2 prints or all PostScript (R).
  • All must have the same Page accuracy.
  • Prints must be less than or equal to half the roll width including hard margins

Turning nesting On and Off

Nest setting selected
Printer’s response
Off
The printer will not nest pages.
99, ... 2, 1 The number represents the number of minutes that the printer waits, after receiving a file, before it starts printing.
Choose one of these values if you want to use the least amount of paper. The printer will search all through the queue for suitable pages. It will nest the pages according to an algorithm that, for most combinations of page sizes, saves the most paper. The resulting nesting pattern may still vary, depending on the size of the first page.

Which pages cannot be rotated?

  • Apart from obvious physical limitations on the roll, any HP-GL/ 2 page containing raster data will not be rotated.

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